The Exorcist: Believer (2023)
Director: David Gordon Green
Screenwriters: Peter Satler, David Gordon Green
Starring: Leslie Odom Jr, Ann Dowd, Jennifer Nettles, Norbert Leo Butz, Lidya Jewett, Olivia Marcum, Ellen Burstyn
“If the child gives the effect another turn of the screw, what do you say to two children?”
The line above comes from Henry James’ gothic novella The Turn of the Screw, and it feels oddly relevant to Blumhouse’s decision to expand The Exorcist into a more contemporary franchise entry. The central conceit here—doubling the number of possessed children—reads like a marketing calculation: two kids should equal twice the dread. Yet the film struggles to translate that premise into anything genuinely unsettling or original.
At its core, The Exorcist: Believer follows a familiar possession narrative. A child disappears, returns altered and unresponsive to medical explanation, and exorcism becomes the only recourse. That structure is intact but multiplied: instead of one frightened parent and one afflicted child, we now have two parallel family crises. The doubling does create a few novel logistical and emotional beats, but it does not substitute for cumulative mood, thematic depth, or unexpected storytelling choices.
Small details underscore how unambitious the film can be. Early on, Lidya Jewett’s character Angela watches a classroom video of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” a gesture intended to signal literary dread but handled so clumsily it reads like a placeholder for genuine atmosphere. The film repeatedly hints at spiritual or psychological complexity without committing to the patient, unsettling build that made the original Exorcist so effective. Instead of letting dread grow slowly and organically, Believer rushes to shock, opting for quick scares and familiar “creepy kid” moments that rarely land.
Pacing is a major problem. The movie spends substantial time staging the possession, then leaps abruptly into “they’re evil now” mode, cutting off the possibility of a gradual escalation. The result is a series of derivative set pieces—doors slamming, contorted faces, startling noises—delivered without cumulative tension. When the exorcists finally arrive, the climax plays out as a blunt, uninspired confrontation. Actors do what they can with thin dialogue and late-arriving attempts at character development, but the emotional stakes never feel earned.
David Gordon Green’s name carries the promise of specific directorial strengths after his Halloween (2018) reinvention, but those strengths are muted here. The film’s attempts at earnestness—an extended montage celebrating communal resistance to evil—land as sappy and schematic rather than profound. Screenwriter Peter Sattler and Green favor exposition over mystery, which strips the material of ambiguity and the moral complexity that gave earlier entries weight.
Ellen Burstyn’s presence in the cast is used as a marketing anchor connecting Believer to William Friedkin’s 1973 classic. Yet her screen time is fleeting—three brief scenes that neither deepen the story nor honor her legacy. Including a legacy character but failing to give her meaningful influence feels like an afterthought rather than an organic continuation of the franchise’s themes. If the filmmakers intended to tether this installment emotionally to the original, they neglect the one element that made the 1973 film resonate: its interrogation of faith, doubt, and personal sacrifice.
Where the original Exorcist focused on Father Karras’ internal struggle—his crisis of faith and his gradual confrontation with literal and figurative demons—Believer largely sidesteps such introspection. It replaces slow-burn psychological and theological inquiry with more conventional horror tropes. The film occasionally gestures toward the franchise’s tradition of moral complexity, but these moments never cohere into a sustained investigation of character or theme.
Franchise history shows the risks of prioritizing brand recognition over tonal fidelity. Prior sequels and prequels have suffered when studios demanded crowd-pleasing finales or retrofitted franchise elements into unrelated scripts. Believer feels like a contemporary, studio-driven attempt to extract value from an iconic title without preserving the original’s spiritual and atmospheric rigor.
In summary, The Exorcist: Believer is serviceable as a modern possession picture but lacks the inventiveness, patience, and moral seriousness that distinguished the original. It’s competent in places—performances are earnest, and individual scenes display technical craft—but overall it plays safe, recycling familiar beats instead of exploring new angles. For fans hoping for a true sequel that expands the franchise’s thematic ambitions, this entry will likely disappoint. For viewers who favor straightforward supernatural thrills, it may provide a few effective shocks, but not much more.
Score: 1/5