“Kaleidoscope Film Review” returns with its latest review of Universal’s, Blumhouse Productions, & Morgan Creek Entertainment’s production of The Exorcist: Believer.  Co-written by Peter Sattler & director David Gordon Green, the movie stars Leslie Odom, Jr., Lydia Jewett, Olivia O’Neill, Jennifer Nettles, Ann Dowd, Norbert Leo Butz, & Ellen Burstyn.  Rated ‘R’, it has a running time of 1 hr., 51 min. 

The film opens in Haiti where Victor Fielding (Odom) & his pregnant wife are vacationing.  A massive earthquake occurs; his wife is greatly injured, & doctors give Peter a choice: save his wife or save the unborn child.   The film jumps ahead 13 years, and the focus is on Peter & his daughter Angela (Jewett).  While Peter has lost his faith in God, Angela has a tenuous relationship with the Almighty.  One day, Angela & her friend Katherine (O’Neill), who is from a very religious Baptist family, journey into the woods to perform a ritual, which Angela hopes will help her communicate with her mother.  After being gone for several hours, Peter contacts Katherine’s parents, Miranda (Nettles) & Tony (Butz), for help in searching for the missing girls.  Thus begins a 3-day manhunt that culminates with the girls being found in a barn where they seem in good health with only burns to their feet.  The film transitions to Act II where the parents & we learn that the girls’ foray may have taken them further than to the barn. 

Green is seeking to duplicate here the success he had with the superbly written & directed 2018’s Halloween, the well written & directed 2021’s Halloween Kills, & the thoroughly mediocrely written & directed 2023’s Halloween Ends.  I applaud his eagerness to make the iconic & truly frightening 1973’s The Exorcist & 1978’s Halloween relevant to today’s TikTok, YouTube, & Instagram’s self-absorbed youth.  However, other than his first Halloween, Green’s efforts are middling, at best.  The scares that were endemic & arose naturally out of the 70’s material in The Exorcist seem more forced here.  While there were jump scares & other frightening scenes aplenty in the former, there was a corresponding lack of them in the latter.  Hurrah for Green & his partner Danny McBride for putting forth well-made horror; the hope that they make the 2nd of an expected trilogy scarier—especially with the cameo at the end of Believer.  With the help of Blum (who, with James Wan, have made a series of excellent genre films in the Conjuring & Insidious franchises), this may become a reality.  Broadway star Odom (Hamilton) is excellent as a father who has had faith, lost it, & seeks to regain it to save his daughter & his own soul.  It is also pleasantly ironic that Odom had a recurring role as a priest on Law & Order: SVU for several seasons.  Newcomer Jewett was also extremely effective as the possessed Fielding daughter; she more than competently mirrored Regan’s state as depicted in the original film.  O’Neill was also fine in a similar if less notable role.  Broadway veteran Butz & “Sugarland” veteran Nettles give average, stereotypical performances as Katherine’s distraught parents.  Veteran Dowd (Handmaid’s Tale) gives able support as the voice of reason in a supernatural setting.  What can one say about 90-year-old Burstyn?  She is as much of a pleasure to watch now as she was 50 years ago in the original.  The only disappointment was that her screen time was too limited.  Amman Abbasi’s & David Wingo’s musical score is appropriately sinister, even incorporating Mike Oldfield’s “Tubular Bells” at key moments.  Michael Simmonds’s cinematography is very moody although a bit one-note in its unrelenting darkness.  

I give The Exorcist: Believer 7 out of 5 nuggets.  It is a capable if uninspired reboot of the film that gave us frights, scares, & chills so long ago.  Here is to the hope that Green & McBride can elevate their 2 proposed sequels to the original’s level of craftsmanship & level of fear!