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Movie review
Cue up those “Tubular Bells.”
Mike Oldfield’s haunting theme, linked forever to “The Exorcist,” is insinuated softly on the soundtrack midway through “The Exorcist: Believer,” tying the sequel back to the 1973 original. It reappears under the end credits in a final salute to this movie’s origins.
It’s all of a piece with writer-director David Gordon Green’s goal of differentiating his version from the multiple sequels and prequels (there have been four) that have been released in the past half-century. He’s gone back to the source, which is to say he’s cast Ellen Burstyn, the star of the first movie, in a key role. (She has not previously been involved in any of the follow-up pictures.)
Her character, Chris MacNeil, has become a bestselling author in the intervening years, having detailed her experience with her daughter’s exorcism and its aftermath. The book alienated her daughter, and now Chris has lost contact with her and is guilt-ridden as a result. Her reentry into the world of exorcism after so long a time has dire consequences.
Green’s version does not acknowledge any of the other sequels. In his “Exorcist” timeline, they don’t exist. He adopted the same strategy when he got the job of rebooting the “Halloween” franchise: Start fresh.
His “Exorcist” departs radically from the template established by William Peter Blatty, whose novel inspired the late William Friedkin’s ’73 blockbuster.
Although Burstyn’s character, mother of the demonically possessed child Regan (Linda Blair) in the original movie, is key, “Believer” revolves around single dad Victor Fielding, played by Leslie Odom Jr., and his 13-year-old daughter, Angela (Lidya Jewett).
Actually, there are two girls who fall prey to demonic forces, Angela and her best friend Katherine (Olivia O’Neill). One day they skip school and go walking through some spooky woods (shades of “The Blair Witch Project” there), and vanish. When they turn up miles away three days later with no memory of what happened to them, they’re … changed. Strange stares. Violent mood swings. Zombielike walking. Convulsions. Also, guttural, R-rated speechifying reminiscent of Mercedes McCambridge’s voice-overs that scared audiences in the original.
Demonically possessed, the girls’ descent into possession freaks out Victor and Katherine’s parents (Jennifer Nettles and Norbert Leo Butz). They frantically seek help. But as was the case in the original, experts with all their modern technology are baffled and powerless in the face of the malign supernatural.
Which leads to a further departure from the template set in ’73. In place of Catholic priests handling the exorcism tasks, Green takes a more ecumenical approach.
Multiple victims require interventions by people from a variety of faith backgrounds: a Pentecostal preacher, a Baptist minister, a traditional healer called a root doctor, a former nun — and also a Catholic priest.
And then there’s Victor, who is a nonbeliever. Religion is all superstition to him.
When modernity is of no use, old-time religions are brought into play, and along the way all the participants experience various crises of faith.
Though slow to launch (a failing of the original movie as well), once the possessions start taking hold, Green layers on the scares. Nods to occurrence in the first movie include levitations, spontaneously appearing gashes and copious vomiting. No green pea soup here; instead, vile CG black glop spews forth freely.
There’s even a literal twist, a grotesque head-turning that harks back to Blair’s most memorable scene in the original.
As an homage to Friedkin’s movie, Green’s take is respectful and genuinely scary. Let those tubular bells chime forth in celebration.
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