The Exorcist: Believer

Some elements of The Exorcist today look a little shaky; time and technology will do that. Others remain as disturbing as they were in 1973. What is undeniable is the intellectual base of the film, the struggle with faith against a profound evil, remain key to character and plot as does the film’s overwhelming sense of hopelessness.

It’s unlikely that director David Gordon Green, co-written with Peter Sattler, from a story by Scott Teems, Danny McBride, and Green, were ever looking to tap into the philosophical elements that lay within William Peter Blatty and William Friedkin’s film.

What they have tried to do is diverge away from the Catholic dogma, as it is most closely associated with exorcism, to other faiths and rituals. That is solid progressive idea. The problem is that the execution is a complete mess leaving a film bereft of any real heart or soul and again one that panders to fan fodder.

The story is that Victor Fleming (Leslie Odom Jr) daughter Angela (Lidya Jewett) and her friend Katherine (Olivia O’Neill) go missing in the woods only to return a few days later suffering from suspected mental traumas that are soon found to be way off the mark. Through a very convoluted route Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn) is brought back as some sort of consultant.

The editing and short scenes career the viewer through the film to the final exorcism where the mess truly comes to fruition with Angela and Katherine in the centre of circle of exorcists. One can appreciate the level of confusion that must this sort of ceremony would be like if conducted but this borders on the comical with each trying to get their bit in.

I’ll leave the viewer to ponder about the smorgasbord of faiths, I don’t know enough about any of them to truly comment. But looked at purely on entertainment value there is precious little here of any weight. The effects are good if tying itself too closely to the original. Which then leads to the fan gifts such as a graphic death that alludes to Burke’s macabre death in the original though that was never seen, and then more.

Like last week’s Saw X, at times this looks like an indulgence at worst a members’ only club. That won’t be a problem for those not in the club until there’s the lone smug knowing laugh or worse the cheering that accompanies these elements and seriously polluting cinemas at the moment.

The other problem with this sort of thing is that it suggests a lack of confidence in the director’s and writers own original material.

The Exorcist: Believer is cinemas now.