The Exorcist: Believer (2023) Let us now turn our attention to a unique category of films that, unfortunately, have become all to prevalent in our current cinema culture......and usually lead to the degradation and ruination of all the major studios who unleash on the world.
I speak of movies I file away in my mind as....A MOVIE THAT NOBODY ASKED FOR OR EVER WANTED BUT WE MADE IT ANYWAY....(AND BADLY.)
Into this shameful file I would throw in the following.....all of Disney's abysmal live action versions of their animation classics, all upcoming comic book movies from Marvel and DC (and including the most recent despicable bunch like 'Ant Man: Quantumania', 'Shazam 2', 'Black Adam', 'Blue Beetle', etc., etc.....and random sequel throwaways like Expendables 4 and 'Meg 2')
Which now leads me, as you might've guessed to the latest example of A MOVIE THAT NOBODY ASKED FOR OR EVER WANTED BUT WE MADE IT ANYWAY...(AND BADLY.)
Prolific horror impresario Jason Blum,Dark Lord Of Blumhouse Pictures, pumped out 400 million for the right to turn William Friedkin and William Peter Blatty's 1973 groundbreaker "The Exorcist" into a trilogy.
And who else could the Blum-inator turn to but the current poster boy for Movies Nobody Wanted than writer director David Gordon Green, fresh from his far, far less than triumphant "Halloween" trilogy.
To be fair, Green generated some praise from critics and fans for his first 'Halloween', which erased the histories of all previous crappy 'Halloween' sequels and reboots. But he quickly wore out his welcome with the subsequent tedious slogs of "Halloween Kills" and "Halloween Ends".
Now, with the many maladroit misjudgments on view in " The Exorcist: Believer", he's already scraped bottom to kick off his new trilogy. No wonder it's left audiences cringing and rolling their eyes at the thought of two more of these Exorcist movies in the works. Yuk.
In the interests of diversity and inclusion, the film offers a two-for-one deal on adorable 13 year old girls possessed by the Devil - one white, one black. (Given the Devil's taste for cute young teens, he's really just a more overtly aggressive version of Humbert Humbert...)
Friedkin's original film spent a vivid chunk of time on the grueling and painful clinical tests endured by Linda Blair to pinpoint a medical reason for her...uh....sudden anti-social behavior. Green skims over the futile attempts of modern medicine to jump right into what we all expect.....a religious onslaught of prayers, incantations and assorted voodoo mumbo jumbo, all of it directed at our now cursing, fluid spewing, devilishly corrupted cutie-pies.
This adolescent gruesome twosome duly perform their required, exhausting and tiresome collection of Exorcism tropes......growling, gargling, breaking out in rotted toothed satanic grins. To say we've seen it all before sounds like the understatement of the decade. Watching these girls go through their inevitable monstrous motions is like listening to a third rate Beatles cover band......
The worst is yet to come.......when the filmmakers reveal what they thought of as their ace card - the inclusion of 90 year old Ellen Burstyn reprising her iconic role as Linda Blair's terrified, tormented mother. A brilliant coup on their part, I must say........but then this mediocre bunch, low on imagination throwaway Burstyn's participation by using her primarily for a fleeting grindhouse-worthy cheap thrill. What a stupid waste of a gifted talent rarely seen on the big screen these days......
Unlike "The Exorcist", which was steeped in Catholicism, 'Believer' believes that it takes a multi-faith village to kick the Devil's ass our little girls, tied to chairs back to back This time a whole crowd of folks surrounds them,,, ,including a priest, a pastor, a voodoo ex-oncologist, the holy roller parents of one girl, the Atheist father of the other. (This group sounds like the start of a "6 people walk into a bar' joke.....)
But the 'get-thee-behind-me-Satan' heavy lifting's mostly performed by an ex-nun nurse (played with more gravitas than the film deserves by reliably terrific character actress Ann Dowd.)
This climactic exorcism, by the way, drags on and on to interminable lengths......at some point I checked my watch, thinking this was taking longer than the entirety of "Avatar The Way Of Water".
But I'll say this much for Green and his co-writers.....they do come up with a rather stunning conclusion which reveals, with sly subtlety, their view of organized religion....I dare not say more....the devil's in the details....heh, heh, heh......
Finally, the film makes a last gasp, 'Hail Mary' pass at nostalgic sentiment (much like the closing minutes of "Indiana Jones and The Dial Of Destiny".....a nice bit I'll admit, but by that time I only felt relieved it was over.......and looked forward to two more David Gordon Green-Blumhouse exorcisms about as much as I'm waiting for my next two Colonoscopies....
1 & 1/2 stars (* 1/2). Straight to hell with it......
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