The Devil Don't Care: THE EXORCIST And the Death of the Legacy Sequel

I. SAY YOUR PRAYERS

I’m a relatively godless man.

I wasn’t raised in a particularly religious household or family; they had and have their beliefs, but they weren’t expressed outwardly in times of non-crisis all that often.  I did a stint of Catholic education, but it was really late in my schooling; I went down the rare pipeline of secular K-through-8th, THEN getting taught by nuns at the age of 14.  As a result, I definitely found learning about Catholicism interesting (I’m one of those who thinks all people should do a once-through of major religious texts like The Bible, even if just as a piece of literature), but by the time high school began, the cement was probably already too dry in my head to really believe it.  There’s just too many contradictions, too many sects and groups of people who think they’re the only correct ones and everybody else in the world is wrong, even though all religions more or less believe the same things when you get right down to it.  It ain’t for me.

And yet….what the hell do I know?  I know full well the limitations of my intellect.  The mere fact that something doesn’t add up for me doesn’t really mean much in the grand schemes of things.  Hell, my non-believer status might even be the greatest single positive qualifier in favor of religion.  So who knows?  Thus, in the great family tradition, I find myself praying to a higher power in times of crisis anyway, even if it’s with a little detachment.  Who am I to say it doesn’t work?  

For instance, the other night, I prayed that the concept of the legacy sequel would be vanquished from the Earth. 

I don’t really need to explain what the “legacy sequel” is, right?  Even if you had somehow never heard the phrase, the very name describes it perfectly.  It’s a sequel that carries the “legacy” of a particular franchise or property, usually years and years, even decades, after the last nail in the coffin appeared to have been hammered in.  They’ve been around for quite a long time, especially on television, but the genre seems to have gotten turbocharged around 2015, with the one-two financial punch of JURASSIC WORLD and STAR WARS: EPISODE VII - THE FORCE AWAKENS wreaking havoc in Hollywood.  

And look, the appeal is obvious.  I don’t need to be the millionth person to get into the concept of people looking for comfort in trying times, and that comfort usually being in the form of nostalgia, one of the most powerful drugs in the world, the only concept that can make us go back in time, the closest thing we have to potential time travel.  And how, just like any other drug, nostalgia can be actively destructive in large doses, causing us to forever look backwards rather than blaze through to the future, however uncertain it may be.  Nah, there are plenty of think-pieces out there that cover all of this.  And, besides, you inherently know all this in your soul already anyway.

My problem with the concept of the “legacy sequel” is much simpler: they usually suck and are lazy, substituting the hard work of storytelling for “clapping” moments, then often fucking those up, too.  Here come the actors from the previous ones!  Here’s a location or a prop from the original!  Whoah, one of the characters just said The Line!  Are your heartstrings tugged yet?  They’re the cheapest kind of art: the disposable kind (I would be surprised if anybody saw GHOSTBUSTERS: AFTERLIFE or JURASSIC WORLD - DOMINION more than once).  They’re usually not even interesting enough to be truly bad; they mostly just sit there.

I was thinking about all of this while watching THE EXORCIST: BELIEVER, the new horror legacy sequel from David Gordon Green, the other week.  I was thinking about a lot of things (mostly because it was boring).  About how transcendent the original EXORCIST still feels fifty years later.  About just how many attempts at a true and proper follow-up have been attempted since Gerald Ford was in the Oval Office and how none of them have ever truly worked.  And, most importantly, about why I was burning a free afternoon on this styrofoam cup of a movie.

The only real benefit I was able to pull from the experience is that it seems to me like the signs are forming of the legacy sequel boom coming to a close.  I might just have to keep praying hard enough.

II. WHAT AN EXCELLENT DAY FOR AN EXORCISM

The first time I ever saw THE EXORCIST, it was in the form of a Hollywood Video DVD rental, picked up in pursuit of some late-night entertainment during a teenage sleepover (I should probably clarify that I was also a teenager at the time).  Although my friends and I at that age usually aimed for such video cassette horror classics as ICE-CREAM MAN*, TERROR TOONS and JACK FROST for our cinematic indulgences (the kinds of things you rent for the night based solely off of the VHS cover), you can only hear about something being “the scariest movie of all time” for so long before you decide to class it up for a night.  It didn’t hurt that this was right around the time that the famous Director’s Cut (“The Version You’ve Never Seen!”) had hit the market, which meant THE EXORCIST was getting quite a bit of press around the time of that fateful night.

*Starring Clint Howard in the titular role!

We watched it and…I remember being only vaguely interested!  There were likely a plethora of reasons as to why.  My first guess was that, at the age of twelve, I was already firmly in my “everything is stupid and overrated” butthole phase, an era of my life that only lasted another twenty years.  With reflection, however, I’m not precisely certain how scary THE EXORCIST can really be to a thirteen-year old, especially the particularly fake-cynical type that I was.  It was definitely memorable; how could you ever forget Linda Blair vomiting up green sludge like she just walked out of Pea Soup Andersons?  Since this was the Director’s Cut, how could you ever shake the famous Spider Walk?  How could you…um…ever look at a crucifix the same way?  And yet, I definitely wasn’t scared, and I made sure everybody else at the sleepover knew it (I should mention, besides being a cynic, I was a real asshole at twelve years old).

But…what else would you really expect to happen?  THE EXORCIST, as it turns out, is not specifically designed to scare relative young-uns, although there’s enough flayed skin and gross puke contained within that it probably happens anyway.  No, it’s a horror movie for adults, and not in the “tied up naked co-eds” kind of way.  Specifically, this is a movie for people who have lived long enough to start having doubts about their previous actions.  To start wondering if maybe they’ve got it all wrong.  To begin living with unanswerable questions.

The real villain of THE EXORCIST isn’t the demon Pazuzu.  It’s regret.

The story of THE EXORCIST is still wildly famous even fifty years later, but in case you need a refresher…the main conflict of the movie begins when Regan MacNeil (Linda Blair) starts acting oddly.  Where a bright, happy twelve-year old girl once stood, a strange sore-covered demon begins to form.  Nobody seems to have a clue what is going on, least of all her actress mother Chris (Ellen Burstyn).  The various doctors that take a look at her chalk it up mostly to a psychological condition, something that Chris rejects vehemently (and perhaps rightfully so, given Regan’s state).  However, by the time Chris’ director friend Burke Dennings (Jack MacGowran) is found dead outside the MacNeil house, his body found right underneath Regan’s window after going into her room alone only minutes before...it’s clear something needs to be done.

When science fails to produce answers, where else is there to turn?

Enter Fathers Lancaster Merrin and Damien Karras.

We spend quite a bit of time with these two during the first half of this movie; in fact, the first twenty minutes or so is almost a short film all its own, as we follow Merrin (Max von Sydow) as he walks the deserts of Iraq armed with proof that an old enemy has awakened.  Although some people may call the opening slow (I am not one of those people), it’s an incredibly bold, patient, and confident way* to open up a movie of this caliber, and it pays off.  The shot of von Sydow staring down the statue of Pazuzu at the end of this sequence is as rousing and engaging as any other start to a film I can think of, and Friedkin pulls it off without a fucking word of dialogue.  

*Remember when popular movies could still be slow burns?  Would the Netflix algorithm ever allow a movie to open like this?

The movie also lays the groundwork for where Father Karras (Jason Miller) is, both emotionally and spiritually, prior to his showdown with Pazuzu.  He carries a heavy load as a psychiatrist to other priests.  He confesses to a colleague that he’s questioning his faith.  Privately, crucially, he’s struggling with how to deal with his ailing mother.  She’s clearly not able to care for herself at home, yet he can’t live with himself during the brief period she’s admitted to a callous asylum*.  Although she’s ultimately able to die in her own home, Karras isn’t there for her at the end.  You get the palpable sense that Karras is going to be thinking about how things could have gone for a long time, maybe forever.

*If you haven’t picked up on it, there’s a strong anti-psychiatry streak to this movie that is inexorably linked to its pro-church theme.  I mention this because it means THE EXORCIST stands as proof that a well-constructed and compelling story can transcend one’s own personal compass.  

Karras gets connected with Chris via a mutual friend, Father Dyer.  After a visit to Regan’s room (which yields him only a face full of green puke), Karras correctly surmises that Regan is possessed by a demon and the only solution is to dust off a near-defunct church ritual: the exorcism (cue the tubular bells!).  His superiors reluctantly allow him to move forward with this, contingent on him bringing on a more experienced priest, who happens to be….Father Merrin!  The stage is set. 

It all leads to one of the most memorable sequences in 70’s horror, the climactic exorcism, where the brutality of Pazuzu (who winds up becoming an insanely formidable opponent relative to how stupid its name is) is laid bare.  Besides being shockingly foul and disgusting, both in look and in speech, it seems to have an instant read on what terrifies its foes to their core.  This results in the most chilling moment of the movie, at least for me*.  Pazuzu, using Regan as its vessel, begins to speak to Karras as his mother, asking him “why did you do this to me?  I’m afraid!”  As he clutches his ears and screams, “You are not my mother!”....well….

*I recognize that, in a movie that features, again, a possessed pre-teen masturbating with a crucifix, this may represent somewhat of a hot take on my part.

Look, I can’t claim to have had to deal with an aging, ailing parent.  But I have loads of profound regrets in other directions, and worries that maybe I should have been at places I chose not to be.  I replay lots of moments from the movie of my life, wishing I had a second take to use.  So to reach this moment in THE EXORCIST at thirty-five, it should come to no surprise that it hits waaaaay harder than it ever possibly could at the age of twelve.

Karras is ultimately in a showdown with himself.  With his regrets and doubts.  With grief.  With the memories of his mother.  The things that have merely kept him up at night now threaten to kill him.  And it speaks volumes that, in a movie that’s filled with striking and audacious moments (nearly 100% of the special effects, performed live on the set, hold up in all their grotesque glory fifty years later) and one so carefully and quietly crafted to set up character without an overload of verbal exposition*, it’s this moment that hit like a ton of fucking bricks for me.

*One of my favorite details establishing how ill-equipped Chris is for the dealing with her possessed daughter is the plethora of handlers and assistants she has milling about her house.

It didn’t help that I mostly forgot how THE EXORCIST ends.  I recalled Father Merrin being the one who dies at the end, but I had forgotten that we lose both priests before all is said and done.  Yes, we also lose Karras, and in a rather brutal fashion.  Although it makes for a bleak end, it perfectly fits.  It’s the completion of the story THE EXORCIST is telling, whether Pazuzu is defeated for good or not (can one truly defeat evil forever?).  And because the story has such a defined end, and because the story was so well-told that people went crazy for it, the movie runs into the same issue that all successful ones inevitably hit.

How do we make another one?

III. HORRIBLE, UTTERLY HORRIBLE, AND FASCINATING

I’ve given a spiel many times before about the stacked deck that pretty much every sequel faces, since they’re almost always tasked with following up movies that were already closed books.  It gets especially hilarious when franchises start realizing that they botched it with a particularly-maligned sequel and try to “fix it”, which leads to competing timelines within a series.

All one has to do is look at something like THE TERMINATOR, which flew too close to the sun after actually nailing its first follow-up (it’s not an opinion I hold, but T2: JUDGMENT DAY is generally considered better than the original) and has spent thirty years trying to come up with a proper T3 ever since.  Maybe the biggest offender in all of Hollywood is the HALLOWEEN franchise, which now boasts five separate timelines, some of which are quite entertaining (I confess to being a fan of HALLOWEEN: H20 and HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH) and most of which are total garbage (see HALLOWEEN: RESURRECTION and both Rob Zombie films, at least in my opinion).

One of the more intriguing examples of this, however, happens to be THE EXORCIST franchise, which now consists of three sequels, none of which are connected to each other in any way, and two prequels, which are really just the same movie cut in different ways.  Naturally, I had to see these for myself.  Before I saw the new David Gordon Green sequel, though, I had to start at the (relative) beginning.

To both sequels’ sort-of credit, there isn’t really an attempt to just do THE EXORCIST again.  Both 1977’s THE EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC and 1990’s EXORCIST III embody decidedly different vibes than Friedkin’s original, although they both accidentally do it in similar ways.  Specifically, they both surround a major (but aging) leading man with weird performances and batshit imagery, all in the pursuit of covering up the fact that, well, there really is no movie at the core of either of them.

How could there be?  What possible loose thread could one possibly pull at by THE EXORCIST’S end?  

EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC starts with the semi-reasonable idea of picking Regan’s story back up with her as a teenager.  A new priest has entered her story, Philip Lamont (Richard Burton), who is also questioning his faith after a botched exorcism in Latin America (and by botched, I mean candles get knocked over and the possessed woman catches on fire; bad times).  A few years later, he gets assigned the duty of investigating Father’s Merrin’s death.  Apparently, there are whispers that Merrin will be marked as a posthumous heretic for performing the titular exorcism from the first movie, since the Church is modernizing and does not wish to confirm the existence of Satan (I’m not sure this makes a lot of sense but, again, I am no liturgical expert).

Father Lamont’s investigation brings him to the New York psychiatric institution Regan MacNeil now lives in, where she is monitored by Dr. Gene Tuskin (a post-CUCKOO’S NEST Louise Fletcher).  It’s here that we’re introduced to the movie’s big device, as well as the first indication that we’re not just doing the first one again: a brain synchronizer that allows its two users to “connect” via brainwaves.  Once brains start getting synchronized, EXORCIST II comes alive with its signature flourishes: flying with locusts all the way to Africa, a possessed James Earl Jones, really provocative camera overlays…there are long sequences of EXORCIST II that feel like fever nightmares.  I admit to loving the un-intuitive approach here. 

All of the above, plus an all-time on-autopilot performance from Richard Burton, makes THE HERETIC sound way more interesting of a start-to-finish experience than it actually is in practice.  One just can’t shake the feeling that director John Boorman is using audacious visuals (and they are audacious) to cover the fact that there really isn’t any movie here.  It particularly struggles with actually connecting itself to the first EXORCIST; specifically, why does the movie have this weird insistence that Father Merrin was the only one present at the first movies’ exorcism?  Seriously, is there some behind-the-scenes thing with Jason Miller that I’m not aware of?  EXORCIST II practically states as a matter of fact that Father Merrin pulled a solo act in EXORCIST I.  Does anybody know why?

It just feels like Boorman, screenwriter William Goodhart, and the film at large, struggled with actually making a movie that serves as an EXORCIST sequel, maybe because there really isn’t anything to continue with two of its driving characters dead and another one cured of her conflict.  I like to imagine, though, a parallel universe where EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC is merely an EXORCIST ripoff named THE HERETIC, the kind of movie that…well, that you’d rent from a Blockbuster twenty years ago off of its batshit cover alone and end up quite liking just for its sheer batshit energy.  Alas, as an officially sanctioned second part to the EXORCIST story, it doesn’t work.

EXORCIST III takes a decidedly different route, starting with pretending EXORCIST II never happened.  We do pick back up with a character from the original, but it’s time it’s not Regan.  No, instead they go with fan favorite...Detective William F. Kinderman!  (You remember him, don’t you?)  This time, the role isn’t played by Lee J. Cobb, but by George C. Scott.  He’s older and more somber, and is starting to worry that an old enemy is beginning to rise again.  There are signs that the Gemini Killer is on the loose again, a threat made all the scarier by the fact that the Gemini Killer was executed fifteen years ago.  Even creepier, he is called to a psychiatric ward to interview a patient who bears a striking resemblance to Damien Karras, who also died fifteen years ago…

EXORCIST III has its fans.  Don’t get me wrong, the appeal is understandable.  It’s an undeniably loony movie, with many scenes and moments that can only be described as flabbergasting; there’s an extended dream sequence where, among others, Fabio and Patrick Ewing appear as angels.  Why?  Who knows?  Plus, there’s The Famous Scene.  You know the one; it’s the one who probably first saw in the form of a YouTube video titled something like “scariest movie scene ever” or something.  Suffice it to say, the scene delivers in context, although it came way later in the runtime than I ever imagined (out of context, it always had “first scene” vibes to me).

But….Jesus Christ, is EXORCIST III a mess.  It reeks of a movie caught between multiple cuts; it vacillates too much between grounded and ungrounded, seemingly at random.  I want to love it for its clear ambition, and for it having the common decency to find a way to bring Jason Miller back, if only briefly.  But it felt mostly like a boring, vaguely pretentious slog.  I’m not as big of a fan of Brad Dourif in this as others seem to be, and I think George C. Scott is also coasting his way through this the exact same amount as Richard Burton did in PART II; he’s just more awake while doing it.  The individual pieces are really interesting and, when viewed in isolation, make it seem like a borderline gonzo masterpiece (again, “scariest movie scene ever!”).  But, when strung together, the most interesting thing that emerges is that William Peter Blatty himself directed it.

Finally, there’s the odd tale of the EXORCIST prequels, which is really the same movie twice.  Yep, 2004’s THE EXORCIST: THE BEGINNING and 2005’s DOMINION: PREQUEL TO THE EXORCIST are more or less two stabs at the same idea (and start with the same production premise of EXORCIST III: “none of the other sequels ever happened”).  The idea of an EXORCIST prequel started in 1997, and churned through possible stars and directors; Liam Neeson was the star of this project at one point, and both Tom McLoughlin and John Frankenheimer were tagged to direct at different times along the way before landing on Stellan Skarsgard and Paul Schrader by 2002.  

The two movies share a starting off point; Stellan Skarsgard is a younger Father Merrin suffering from a crisis of faith, and haunted by a traumatic Nazi-induced past.  He is now tasked with investigating a church found buried in the ground during a dig in Kenya.  As he and a companion keep looking further into it, it’s clear that the church isn’t so much built to worship something above, but perhaps to keep something down below.

This is sort of an intriguing idea for two reasons.  One: there’s a cold logic to the idea of “well, following up the end of THE EXORCIST has bombed out twice…what if we try to connect to the beginning?”.  Two: Paul Schrader is maybe the only person in the Hollywood sphere who potentially has the juice for this kind of assignment; his unique brand of human interest and nihilism fits right in with the EXORCIST universe.  If anyone could make an EXORCIST prequel work, it might be him.

Personally, though, I typically find prequels to be even more of a pointless pursuit than sequels are.  Most movies tend to start their stories at the most logical place: where the conflict begins.  Take THE EXORCIST: if it was truly all that important to establish and dramatize Merrin’s previous run-ins with the Devil prior to Iraq, the movie would have done so.  But it didn’t, because there was no need to.  As we talked about, the EXORCIST prologue sets up Merrin as a character as well as you can imagine, and with minimal dialogue.  There’s not a whole lot of further elaboration needed.  It’s fun to imagine how intense Merrin’s previous run-ins with Pazuzu might have been, but actually seeing it play out isn’t that entertaining*.

*This is also known as the STAR WARS Prequel Problem.

Morgan Creek watched the original 130-minute cut of Schrader’s movie, which was light on actual scares and heavy on pace, and naturally fucking freaked out, seemingly unaware of who Paul Schrader was.  A re-edit was demanded, then another, neither of which satisfied the studio.  Producer Sheldon Kahn was brought in to re-cut it on his own, which infuriated Schrader.  By August of 2003, Schrader was fired and the film was junked entirely.  Back to the drawing board.

This is what led to the alternate (but technically first, in terms of release date) version of the film, directed by Renny Harlin* and rewritten and recast from the ground up, although Skarsgard was retained, as well as Andrew French, who played Chuma.  The shoot was a mess (one might say….cursed?), unhelped by the fact that Harlin got hit by a car two weeks in and had to direct on crutches for a month and a half.  It was a real race to the finish, only officially finishing days before its August 20th, 2004 release.  

*The ultimate “guy whose movies you’ve seen ten of, even if you don’t know his name” guy; seriously, check his filmography some time.  DEEP BLUE SEA, THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT, NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 4, CLIFFHANGER….the list goes on.

You’ll never believe this, but the 2004 version fucking sucks.  It’s not even bad on a “holy cow what were they thinking?” level.  It just sucks in the way all movies made within compromised, unconfident, stuck-in-survival-mode productions do.  Just as an example of its desperate search for tension: it takes Merrin’s internal conflict (spoilers for a movie you’re not going to watch: Merrin was once made to pick ten members of his Nazi-occupied village in the Netherlands to be executed in retaliation for the death of a German soldier) and drags it out into a long movie-length mystery, the crux of which is not revealed until almost the end.  This is, presumably, in order to drive the viewer to keep watching.  However, it’s not really all that compelling of a device, especially when the final reveal is not terribly more guilt-inducing than what your imagination might have conjured up on its own.  You also need to endure some of the most generic, mid 00’s-looking visuals I’ve seen in a while, including some truly jaw-droppingly horrendous CGI hyenas. 

Even though it only ever saw the light of day because Morgan Creek asked Schrader to finish it, it’s no surprise that the 2005 version of the EXORCIST prequel bodies the 2004 version pretty easily, probably because it contains that “humans are the real evil in the world” throughline that you’d expect from a Schrader joint.  It also plays straight with the audience; Merrin’s Netherlands village prologue just plays out in full right from the beginning, making Merrin’s internal conflict and guilt clear from the start.  Finally, I think the cast is better on the whole; just for instance, Gabriel Mann makes for a more interesting companion (and has more to do) than James D’Arcy did in the 2004 version.

However, it doesn’t solve the Big Problem: who cares?  As a set-up to the 1973 EXORCIST, it doesn’t inform the original movie in any meaningful way, or at least in a way that wasn’t already there.  I cannot imagine anybody watching either of these outside of the context of “gotta knock it out”, like, say, someone trying to see every movie Schrader directed, or, perhaps, writing a big EXORCIST article or something.  DOMINION is twice the movie BEGINNING is, but that makes it a 2/10 rather than a 1.  Either way, they should likely both be avoided.  

So there the property sat for almost twenty years.  And then, three weeks ago, THE EXORCIST: BELIEVER hit theaters.

IV. GOD PLAYED A TRICK ON US

I confess to not being intimately familiar with David Gordon Green’s entire oeuvre.  The only real sense I have for his work comes from his recently completed HALLOWEEN “trilogy”, although it’s really more of a new quadrilogy; like many HALLOWEEN sequels, it starts with the premise that none of the other previous follow-up chapters ever existed.  Thus, 2018 provided us the third movie that could reasonably be referred to as HALLOWEEN II (following 1981’s HALLOWEEN II and 2007’s HALLOWEEN II, and not counting 1998’s HALLOWEEN H20: TWENTY YEARS LATER, which is technically a follow-up to the 1981 HALLOWEEN II….I told you, the HALLOWEEN timeline is messy).

Like most, I don’t really like his set of HALLOWEEN movies; the 2018 movie is perfectly fine and perfectly watchable, although vaguely uninspired in the same way J.J. Abrams’ THE FORCE AWAKENS was.  It worries less about building a story worthy of both following up the first installment AND kicking off two subsequent movies as it does about fussing over feeling like the 1978 original, down to the credit font and the return of Jamie Lee Curtis (a move towards credibility that was already done back in 1998, but I digress).  I do think HALLOWEEN 2018 is a fine time, and the central conceit is valid; there’s something admittedly cool about Laurie spending the last forty years preparing for the next time Michael Myers enters her life by creating a HOME ALONE-esque house of traps.  But it succumbs to the same problem all of these try-hard sequels do: for all of its hand-wringing about capturing a timeless feel, it also veers too topical (two prominently-feature characters are hosts of a true-crime podcast, something that I promise will feel ancient in another five years).  It also makes Mike too brutal, which was never really his M.O. and again feels like a capitulation towards modern bloodlust than anything else.

It won’t shock you that I thought 2021’s HALLOWEEN KILLS was awful to a degree that is borderline un-understandable, starting with its stupid name*.  It’s the rare movie that accomplishes the somewhat contradictory tasks of being both infuriatingly idiotic and completely unmemorable.  There was just nothing there, a middle entry in desperate search for a reason to exist.  I think it wants to be a musing on mob justice, but it became mostly known for its constant, excessive refrain of “evil dies tonight!”.  Maybe it doesn’t want to be anything more than a completed project, and it arguably falls short of that.

*I ask again in search of a straight answer from somebody, anybody: what the fuck does “HALLOWEEN KILLS” refer to?  Does it mean the day itself yields the possibility of killing?  Does it refer to the kills that actually happen in the movie?  Something else entirely that I’m not thinking of?  I expected an explanation in the form of a stirring monologue within the movie itself that included the phrase awkwardly worked in, but alas, this moment never occurs.

The final installment, HALLOWEEN ENDS, is a step up in the sense that it at least has an interesting idea at its core (Michael “passing on” his evil to another young man in Haddonfield, a potent if simple metaphor for the cycle of violence), but when the first identifiable idea in your trilogy comes halfway through the third movie, it is catastrophically too late.  The genuine buzz that the project had in 2018 was completely dissipated by 2022.  It was starkly clear that the HALLOWEEN “trilogy” was green-lit mostly because “a new HALLOWEEN trilogy” is a simple and easy sell in the room.

All this to say that the announcement that the same creative team was handed the keys to create a new EXORCIST trilogy gave me pause.  1978’s HALLOWEEN is one of the best horror movies ever made, but THE EXORCIST might be even better in terms of aesthetic, performance and overall substance.  Also, as mentioned, nobody in fifty years had really cracked the formula towards creating one truly satisfying EXORCIST follow-up, so greenlighting three at once seemed ambitious.  Also, it should be noted that Universal and Peacock teamed up to purchase the distribution rights to this franchise at the tidy sum of $400 million.  Surely they wouldn’t have made such a bold and risky decision without the knowledge that there were creatives in charge who have made some real choices as to what they wanted to do with it.

So…now that THE EXORCIST: BELIEVER has arrived, what choices did Green and his eternal writing partner Danny McBride come up with?

Well…

Here’s the thing: it’s been a couple weeks, and BELIEVER has already been on the receiving end of some truly brutal reviews, both in print and in video.  Although this frankly didn’t surprise me, I really tried my best not to consume any of them prior to writing this.  Sometimes, when a bad movie arrives and flops, people can smell blood, a dog pile quickly forms and a race to publish the snarkiest or most performatively negative review begins.  I’m not all that interested in participating in that aspect of it; I really do try to give movies a chance, especially when I have to write about them.  So, although I didn’t have a good feeling about all of this, I was hoping that BELIEVER would at least take a big swing or two, in the same way HERETIC or EXORCIST III did.  At least they could provide me with something unalterably weird like the CGI hyenas.

You’re never going to believe this, but they played it safe.

THE EXORCIST: BELIEVER is technically about a man named Victor Fielding (Leslie Odom Jr., who is serving a massive leading role here; he’s in essentially every scene) who is still reeling from the loss of his wife in childbirth, the result of a choice he is forced to make during their honeymoon.  Thirteen years later, Victor is completely stripped of his faith, and is just focused on performing single fatherhood as best he possibly can.  Everything begins to collapse for him again when, while going on an unscheduled adventure after school, his daughter Angela and her best friend Katherine go missing in the woods.  Three days later, they reappear and begin to act….different.  Almost like there’s something…different about them.  You might even say…they’ve each been possessed by a demon.  Now what?  All that and the “now what” is what this movie is technically about.

What it’s really all about, though, is just doing THE EXORCIST again, with some superficial changes.  This time, it’s two possessed girls!  This time, it’s a dad trying to deal with his suddenly sick daughter!  Oh, look!  It’s Ellen Burstyn, only this time, she dabbles in exorcism, which is good because the actual priest character in BELIEVER is a complete non-factor (talk about missing the fucking point).  In an infuriating move that reeks of loss of confidence, Victor is also haunted by a choice he made many years ago, only this time, it’s presented to us as a twist to pull the rug out from under us, robbing us of any sense of doom or character.  Yes, the only other EXORCIST movie this takes inspiration from is THE EXORCIST: THE BEGINNING.  Take that for what you will.

To some degree, this might be the only bullet a potential EXORCIST sequel has left to fire.  But after almost a decade of this kind of IP film-making, it is perhaps the most ruinous decision it could have possibly made.  Friedkin’s original is a lot of things, but something that has gotten lost to the sands of time is that it felt legitimately dangerous to its contemporary audiences.  People reportedly fled the theaters, they vomited in the restroom, one woman even allegedly miscarried.  Now, like all stories of hysteria like this, I highly suspect them to be largely apocryphal.  However, the fact that the tales generated in the first place indicates that 1973 EXORCIST managed to tap into a fear very, very real to the average 1970’s American, that of leaving the door open for Satan.  America is 2023 is admittedly a very different place in a lot of different ways for a lot of different reasons.  However, it’s imperative for a movie that wants so badly to feel like the original to actually tap into a similar type of innate fear.  It’s not like it’s difficult; the average 2020’s American walks around terrified of any number of things of all levels of legitimacy.  In the Internet age, personifying evil is not a difficult task.

This is not to claim that the act of actually dramatizing it in screenplay form is easy.  It is not!  It’s fucking hard!  There’s a reason nobody has ever asked me to make an EXORCIST sequel; I would do a terrible, terrible job.  But, at this moment in time, Green, McBride and Jason Blum (and many others) were asked to perform a task that many other filmmakers (a couple of which are, frankly, better artists) had failed at.  Perhaps it was a poisonous premise for a film to begin with, but the instinct to just play the hits is simply a non-starter as a potential solution.  Plus, to be frank, unlike HALLOWEEN and STAR WARS, THE EXORCIST is not a franchise so ubiquitous in pop culture that a hard palette cleanser was required, so I don’t buy that as a potential excuse.  All in all, it’s creatively dead on arrival from the jump.

After a week of being drubbed in the press, THE EXORCIST: BELIEVER is profoundly fortunate that Taylor Swift and Martin Scorsese respectively entered movie theaters the next two weekends and took up all the oxygen.  As I write this, it is now available for purchase on streaming, indicating it may be gone from theaters altogether by next week.  You get a deep sense that losses might be cut and the other two entries of this “trilogy” will be quietly cancelled and everyone will just move on; in fact, it feels like Universal is already preparing themselves to do just that.  There’s an excellent chance BELIEVER will be merely forgotten about as opposed to being held up as a legacy sequel pariah, a low point in a subgenre that’s been made up of more valleys than peaks at this point in time. 

But…it shouldn’t.  There have been higher-profile IP catastrophes this year (here’s lookin’ at you, THE FLASH and ANT-MAN: QUANTUM-MANIA).  But EXORCIST: BELIEVER does feel like a real turning point in the cynical exercise of franchise necromancy.

You take a look around, and you can sort of see the tide turning in a different way for the types of movies people are really getting excited for.  Obviously, the BARBIE/OPPENHEIMER one-two punch was a big enough success that their opening weekends felt like a true end to the pandemic mindset: people flocked to the theaters in droves, often in costume, both ironically and (mostly) unironically.  Despite all the drama between Marvel and himself, there appears to be a real fervor for Martin Scorsese’s FLOWERS OF THE KILLER MOON (stay tuned to this space, by the way!), especially, and remarkably, with the demographics 35 and under.

Obviously, sequels and “do-overs” will always be a backbone to the Hollywood system and has been since it began.  But I do think (hope, pray) that the era of “follow-up to famous movie + bringing back one or two stars from retirement* + ‘we’re doing this for the fans!’ = money and press!” may be coming to an end, or at least a pause.  Because there are legacy sequels that have something to say; insert my mandated STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI mention here, but I’ll remind everyone that it was only one year ago that everyone went ape-shit for TOP GUN: MAVERICK and its thinly-veiled commentary towards Cruise’s position as the Last Movie Star.  It wasn’t long ago that Ryan Coogler directed Stallone to an Oscar nomination for 2016’s CREED.  These things can be done well.

*This reminds me that I haven’t yet mentioned THE EXORCIST: BELIEVER’s real low point: it wasn’t the trotting out of Ellen Burstyn, it was the trotting out of Linda Blair in a surprise cameo at the end that was met with dead fucking silence in the theater the day I went.

But every one of those, we get seemingly endless amounts of JURASSIC WORLDS and RISE OF SKYWALKERS.  Thus, more attention ought to be paid to EXORCIST: BELIEVER.  It’s not the worst legacy sequel, but it’s leaden and inert enough that it deserves to be the catalyst for a new American film revolution as anything Greta Gerwig and Jonathan Nolan provided us this year.  Maybe the era of the braindead legacy sequel is actually coming to a close.

And that would be the greatest exorcism of all.