The Exorcist: Believer (2023)

Written by CinemaSerf on October 19, 2023

"Angela" (Lidya Jewett) and her school mate "Katherine" (Olivia O'Neill) go for a walk in the woods one day. They don't come home - and panic amongst the parents ensues. Luckily, the girls turn up in a cow-barn a few miles away but have no recollection of just what they had been doing for the three days they had been missing. Anyway, dad "Victor" (Leslie Odom Jr.) soon starts to notice some odd behaviour from his previously reasonable daughter and before we know it, she - and her friend - are showing worrying signs of a possession that resonates all too readily with events some fifty years earlier and that finds him seeking the help of "Chris MacNeil" (Ellen Burstyn) before the girls are Satanic toast. It's ten minutes shy of two hours long this, and that's about ninety minutes too long. The vast majority of this film is taken up by pointless preamble, family establishment scenarios and unfortunately the acting and writing are really lacklustre too. Burstyn only makes sparing appearances and Odom Jr. ought to just stick to singing. The last ten minutes is slightly better than standard Blumhouse fayre that concludes this completely unnecessary sequel with, admittedly, a couple of not so predicable twists, but still - with very little to make the preceding drudge worth watching. This is a poor relation to the original and should have gone straight to a streamer.