The Exorcist: Believer - An Explanation
Was The Exorcist: Believer as bad as the reviews made it out to be? And, if so, why?
The Exorcist: Believer was bad. It’s a simple, well known, fact. It was so bad that it was nominated for five Golden Raspberry awards, including worst picture, although it lost every single one of those nominations to Winnie The Pooh: Blood And Honey. The fact that this first movie in the new The Exorcist sequel trilogy is bad is one that’s taken for granted, and can be backed up with loads of evidence. But there are questions that this bad movie in particular begs. Mainly, why? Why was it so bad? What made it that way? Did it ever have the potential to be good? Can this trilogy be saved? And while I don’t have the answers to all of those questions, I do have some ideas. So, let’s do a little deep dive into just how bad this movie is - and why.
To talk about why this movie was so bad, we first need to talk about why its predecessor was so good, so before going any further, please read this article on the original Exorcist. Thank you. Now, let’s look at why The Exorcist: Believer is so bad in comparison.
One crucial thing that Believer is missing is proper buildup. It’s shockingly good in the first half of the movie, but deteriorates quickly in the second. As opposed to the original, where Regan’s possession is gradual and heartbreaking, Katherine and Angela’s possession is astonishingly quick, leaving no real room for the realization of what’s happening. When Regan was possessed, it wasn’t clear what was happening from the beginning. Sure, she was acting out and such, but she’d just turned twelve and moved for her mother’s work. Of course there were going to be some behavioral changes. This slow realization is a lot of what makes The Exorcist so scary, and so good. In Believer, however, there is no slowness or realization. While it takes the story a while to get to the possession, that’s not because it’s not clear that the girls are possessed. It’s because the director was trying to mimic the pacing of the original with just about no success. Instead of the steady buildup of the original, there’s basically a sense of dread without anything happening for the first half of the movie, and then the audience is dropped straight into horrific possession and exorcism scenes. Angela and Katherine get back, and then suddenly they’re covered in scratches and stabbing eyes out with crucifixes.
Another downfall of Believer is the minimal character development. Victor, Angela’s father, has excellent development and backstory, but no one else really does. Ann, the nurse and exorcist, gets backstory by way of a monologue, and we know next to nothing about Katherine’s parents other than the importance of Christianity in their lives. Unlike in The Exorcist, where we get to see Regan as she was before the possession, we don’t get any real sense of what Katherine and Angela were like before they went into the woods. We know that Angela has a strong connection to her mother and is planning to go vegetarian, but that’s it. We barely see them interact with their parents, or get any sense of their personalities on days where they’re not planning to communicate with spirits, and because of that, we as the audience have no emotional stakes in this exorcism. In The Exorcist, we know the sweet girl that is being lost, which adds to the tension of watching her pain, and that of the people who know her. In Believer, we don’t know these girls, and so don’t feel much for them. The realizations and developments - Ann was going to be a nun and failed, Victor wanted to save his wife and not Angela, only one of the girls can survive this exorcism, the real priest’s dead now, Angela’s dead, no, wait, it’s Katherine - come at us so fast there’s no time to absorb what they mean for these people. Therefore, they mean nothing to us.
Believer is, without a doubt, an Exorcist movie. It’s got the possessed vomiting onto their exorcists, turning people’s heads around, and getting covered in mysterious scratches, as well as the song Tubular Bells for emphasis. But, I think that’s the real problem with it: in many ways, it’s trying too hard. The Exorcist did what it did for culture because of both the environment it came out in and the genuine fear in it. An audience in recovery from the sixties was the best possible on to bolster that movie, and to feel the real impact of it. And, while the fears of William Peter Blatty’s that are on display are very misogynistic and unreasonable, they are clearly genuine. Believer has none of that. It has the sense of a movie that was made by someone who just wanted to make an Exorcist movie that was clearly part of the franchise, but had no idea of the real cultural implications of the original. Sure, there’s the callbacks, but it’s not clear where the fear is meant to be. The only themes in this possession are possession, no clear awakening of any kind, emotional, sexual, or otherwise. The possession is scary simply by nature of being, but falls flat without any real terror to back it up. The Exorcist was important to the year and culture of 1973, but there’s not that same kind of culture now. We don’t quite have that fear anymore, but it was the only one the director knew to put in, so it came up short.
As for the question of if this movie ever had the potential to be good? I think it did. Truth be told, I was excited as hell when it came out, and was disappointed to not be able to see it in theaters. When the bad reviews started coming in, I still wanted to see it, because the trailer looked awesome, I tend to have an urge to defend movies with poor critical reviews, and they got the two main original actors, so how bad could it be? To say I was disappointed on watching it would be an understatement. It was enjoyable in its own way, decidedly a horror movie and very aesthetically pleasing, but, as discussed, it just felt flat. I think that, with a different production team, one that understood the themes of the original and could build off them, it could have been very good even with keeping the same plot. It did have potential that it didn’t live up to.
That said, I also believe it can be saved. The next movie in the trilogy, and hopefully the third, is going to Mike Flanagan, director of Netflix’s The Fall Of The House Of Usher, and The Haunting Of Hill House, both of which I have heard excellent things about, but have never seen. So there’s hope for The Exorcist yet!
To summarize this explanation of a horrible movie: it was lacking. It was lacking in character, proper buildup, theme, and understanding of the original story. And, most importantly, it was lacking in real fear. But, there is still hope for the franchise, and The Exorcist: Believer is enjoyable in its own way.