Fifty years after the Oscar-winning original upended the horror world, David Gordon Green’s “The Exorcist: Believer” makes for a fitfully satisfying reboot.
As “The Exorcist: Believer” builds toward its expected climax, a showdown between two possessed teenage girls and a tag team of amateur and self-anointed demon specialists comes to a boil. Assembling on one side, there’s the unsanctioned Catholic priest; an oncologist turned voodoo practitioner; an evangelical minister; a nurse who once was on her way to becoming a nun; and, briefly, the mother of the possessed girl Regan in the 1973 film to which this is a sequel.
“The battle is in there,” Odum’s Victor Fielding says, in an understatement. Fire, smoke, vomit, blood, skin eruptions, telekinesis, levitation, a red-hot metal crucifix and a tirade of profane utterances follow — shouted with a gravelly voice reminiscent of Mercedes McCambridge, who famously is said to have eaten raw eggs, chain-smoked and swallowed whiskey to dub the voice of the demon Pazuzu in the original film.
The basic setup is also familiar: Victor’s daughter Angela disappears after school with classmate Katherine , and the two turn up three days later in a barn with no memory of where they’ve been.
But seeing what has happened to the Halloween franchise in Green’s hands augurs a dispiriting future. There are already plans in store for “The Exorcist: Deceiver,” a 2025 sequel, and the ending of this one, with one big surprise, hints that the identity of the demon — Green has said in interviews that it’s not Pazuzu — will be critical in determining the direction of the rebooted series.So who is the demon? I don’t know, and we will have to wait to find out. That’s perfectly fine.
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