दि एक्सॉर्सिस्ट: बिलीवर

95 minutes of plot building for a 10 minutes exorcist that was literally the lamest and most boring I've ever seen. And there wasn't even any plot. Nothing was explained about the demon, it's intentions or where it came from. There were no meaningful conversations with the possessed, no head spinning, no vomiting... The trailer was false advertising. No jump scares, no tension building, 1 death... just utter droll. The popes exorcist was better than this and it was lame too compared to Emily Rose and the original. I'm not sure what they were writing here but it wasn't a horror movie. Had me reaching for my phone a dozen times I was so bored.

Ouch....

This was a terrible film, when will they realise that trashy followups such as this are just pointless and unnecessary. The original is a classic, a movie that lived on in the minds of people for decades, this one, you'll forget about within just a few days.

It was only about an hour and a half long, but it felt painfully long, nothing happens until the final ten minutes or so, but even that bit of excitement was underwhelming.

I was genuinely excited by the trailer, and seeing Ellen Burstyn added extra excitement, but the trailer flattered the film, credit to whomever put that together, sadly the film was drab, slow and totally uninteresting.

I know I'd mentally zoned out about two thirds through, but there seemed to be no explanation, who the demon was, what its purpose was, the story was just so disjointed, dare I say badly realised.

It should have been a Halloween chiller, it remained tepid from start to finish.

4/10.

I tried to like it, but after some 10 minutes into the movie I began to fear that this was a complete and utter dud. And it turned out I was right.

The bad: it is suppose to be horror, but it isnt horrifying for one minute. A bit freaky and strange, but definitely not scary. And I wanna get scared watching such a movie. That is the whole point of making horror movies.

More bad: besides a wonderful performance by the ever great Ellen Burstyn, none of the other actors impressed me. The 2 kids, who were possessed were okay, but not terrific either. But the other actors were plain average or even below average.

Defnitely an insult to the classic original from 1973, which was an absolute shocker of a classic!

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.

Sometimes it's ok to just let these classic movies live on as their own thing. I don't know who thought it was a good idea to give the director a shot at this franchise because... those 3 new Halloween movies are atrocious. Not funny, not scary, did not need to be made.

I was bored to tears with this film and kept looking at my watch to see how close it was to being over. The characters were forgettable, the story is nothing new, and I had to stop myself from laughing out loud at the acting quite a number of times.

Just watch the original and then if you want a follow up, watch the director's cut that has some extra scenes.