‘The Exorcist: Believer’ review: a spooky and surprisingly moving reboot

Horror history is littered with subpar sequels and awful origin stories but The Exorcist really takes the biscuit. So terrible was follow-up The Exorcist II: The Heretic that audiences reportedly burst out laughing at the premiere. Next came The Exorcist III, not quite as badly received though somehow less lucrative. And then there’s prequel Exorcist: The Beginning, starring Stellan Skarsgård as a preacher-turned-archaologist whose greatest adversary wasn’t the potty-mouthed incubus Pazuzu but the staid script – which could’ve caused any actor to expire simply from boredom. It makes perfect sense, then, that a new reboot would ignore those unwise cash-ins and dial it back to the beginning.

Enter The Exorcist: Believer, which resets the timeline to some 50 years after the original. Photographer Victor Fielding (Leslie Odom Jr.) is quietly raising teenager Angela (Lidya Jewett) in the shadow of his wife’s tragic death 13 years earlier. He’s a good dad, if understandably anxious and overbearing. Unfortunately when Angela disappears off into the woods one night with rebellious pal Katherine (Olivia Neill, who looks suspiciously like OG demon girl Regan) his nerves really get a testing. The two friends turn up three days later, barefoot and with no memory of where they’ve been or what they’ve encountered there. For some reason this is what bothers their parents most – and not that neither shows any vaguely human signs of emotion. Pale, covered in cuts and bruises as well as sporting permanently vacant expressions, the only thing that appears to motivate our sinister duo is the chance to thoroughly creep everyone out by smashing a limb or forehead through a plate glass window. And if that fails, staring hungrily at a newborn baby certainly does the trick. Eventually, the adults cotton on: something has possessed their daughters.

To say much more risks spoiling the plot, which holds some satisfying surprises. Fans have waited half a century for another decent Exorcist movie, and they won’t have to wait much longer. Believer isn’t as petrifying as the first, which had people fleeing theatres just from watching the trailer, yet there are some disturbing moments. Director David Gordon Green, who helmed the recent trilogy of Halloween reboots, smartly relies on atmosphere and slowly building tension rather than filling the film with too many jump scares.

Surprisingly, the best part of Green’s work isn’t even the horror. It’s the emotional story that weaves in and around the spooky bits. Leslie Odom Jr. (terrific in everything) has believable chemistry with Jewett and they share some of the most moving scenes. Equally impressive is Ellen Burstyn, returning at the grand age of 90 to the franchise that made her name. What classic protagonist Chris MacNeil gets up to is top secret and subject to a strict embargo. So all we’ll say is that it results in a truly heartbreaking sequence that will definitely make you cry. Yes, tears of sadness (really). This might not be what fans expect from an Exorcist movie, but they’ll be even more surprised that it’s actually watchable.