After defiling the Halloween saga with his insipid sequel trilogy, David Gordon Green brings his desecrating vision to yet another beloved horror classic and leaves no stone unturned to insult its unparalleled legacy. Nothing less than an eyesore, The Exorcist: Believer is one of the worst films to surface this year and makes for a wretched, unholy & sacrilegious mess that itself is in desperate need of an exorcism.
Also co-written by Gordon Green (Halloween Kills & Halloween Ends), the story never is able to create any sense of intrigue throughout its runtime and only gets worse as it progresses. There is no emotional weight to its setup, it is severely lacking in atmosphere, is downright ineffective in the scary department with its tired tropes & clichéd attempts. And characters remain distant as well. There isn't one aspect that's executed well.
Where the original was pioneering in its use of horror set pieces, practical effects, sound design & storytelling, this follow-up chapter has got nothing to capture our attention. Everything it tries fails to work out, its attempts to scare the viewers only ends up being hilarious and what it does with Chris MacNeil is not only facepalm-inducing but also mind-numbingly moronic. Acting from all is forgettable and the finale is a neutered, dumbed-down version.
Overall, The Exorcist: Believer is an incompetently directed, shoddily scripted and awfully acted sequel that has no understanding of what makes The Exorcist such an enduring masterpiece of its genre. Much worse than what the negative reception will have you thinking, the film has zero redeemable qualities, offers more laughs than scares by playing out like a parody than a proper sequel and is horror filmmaking at its most bland & uninteresting. In a word, cringeworthy.
