The Exorcist: Believer

Directed by David Gordon Green, The Exorcist: Believer follows Leslie Odom Jr.’s Victor Fielding as he attempts to seek help after his young daughter (Lidya Jewett’s Angela) is possessed by a malevolent demon. It’s familiar territory that is, at the outset, employed to surprisingly watchable and gripping effect by Green, as the filmmaker, armed with his and Peter Sattler’s screenplay, kicks the proceedings off with an impressively compelling opening stretch – with the picture, beyond that point, segueing into a deliberate (yet entertaining) midsection that’s been littered with unexpectedly electrifying sequences and interludes. (This is particularly true of a gripping and flat-out enthralling scene involving a possessed little girl stumbling into a church.) It’s disappointing to note, then, that The Exorcist: Believer slowly-but-surely begins to wear out its welcome once it passes the halfway mark, with the increasingly sluggish atmosphere compounded (and perpetuated) by a curious lack of wholeheartedly engaging attributes. (It doesn’t help, certainly, that the entire final third is devoted to a seriously underwhelming and uninteresting exorcism.) And although Green has peppered this stretch with a few admittedly intriguing touches (eg parents are forced to make an impossible choice), The Exorcist: Believer has, by the time the anticlimactic finish rolls around, petered out to an almost shocking degree – which does, in the end, cement its place as a half-baked sequel that squanders its massive potential.

** out of ****