With the most recent (TV) incarnation of the Exorcist franchise yielding mixed results (terrific first season, dire second season), Blumhouse/Universal expensively pinned their hopes on this proposed new trilogy-opener. The original 1973 film's impact both on its release and in subsequent years is a given, just as its sequels are mostly forgettable (except to some extent Heretic, which was not originally written as an Exorcist movie anyway), so this much-touted revival by Halloween saviour David Gordon Green felt like an event but arrived as something of a rather damp squib. Here, two barely-teenage girl best friends try to summon a spirit but disappear in the woods, lose three days and reappear with rapidly-developing disturbing behaviour from demonic possession. Rather than a hoped-for smart, modern but respectful reboot, Believer is for the most part an unexpectedly dreary drama throwback, murkily shot and adding very little to what worked well before. Callbacks are limited and prove unnecessary apart from marquee value, from the arrival of Ellen Burstyn (Regan's mother from the original) which shows promise but is quickly dispensed with, to the brief use of Tubular Bells which feels perfunctory when motifs derived from it could have been more effective in the absence of any strong new musical themes. There is good work from Leslie Odom Jr (as the suffering father) and Ann Dowd (as the exorcising stand-in), but overall the writing is underwhelming, and what shocked fifty years ago has less impact in a paler version today. It may be that Believer was conceived as the first of the trilogy to reacquaint audiences with more familiar territory and that the subsequent films might be more creative, but whether or not we get to see them made remains to be seen.
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