The Exorcist: Believer

For someone with such a distinct visual style and narrative tone in his indie efforts, David Gordon Green sure loves leaving it all behind for his legacy horror films.

To be fair, the man behind the masterful Snow Angels and All the Real Girls also sidelined his imaginative side for big(ger) budget assignments like Stronger and Our Brand is Crisis, presumably to get out of the way and help maximize the performances of stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Sandra Bullock. But he really went undercover in his three Halloween movies and has done the same for his latest dud, The Exorcist: Believer.

However, it’s not merely directorial anonymity that dooms the latest Exorcist chapter. After a slow but relatively creepy opening in which photographer Victor (Leslie Odom Jr.) loses his pregnant wife to the 2010 Haiti earthquake, then temporarily loses his teenage daughter Angela (Lidya Jewett, Hidden Figures) in present day to mysterious forces in the Georgia woods, Believer settles into well-worn demonic possession territory.

Nevertheless, Green and his co-writer Peter Sattler (Camp X-Ray) loop in a wild card with the potential to connect their movie with William Friedkin’s series starter, which just so happens to be celebrating its 50th anniversary this December. Yes, Ellen Burstyn’s Chris MacNeil offers to help Victor after Angela and her friend Katherine (newcomer Olivia O’Neill) turn up with evil spirits inside them three days after going missing. But the filmmakers so thoroughly disrespect Burstyn’s contributions to this saga that one wishes she wasn’t part of this mess at all.

Lacking the pervading creepiness of Friedkin’s film, The Exorcist: Believer lands a few good jump scares, but it would be a stretch to call the overall thing “scary.” The closest it gets to earning that label is in the big, chaotic finale, during which committed performances by Jewett and O’Neill as the demons run wild are aided by some impressive makeup effects.

But it’s nothing experienced genre fans haven’t seen before. And the screenwriters’ “it takes a village” approach to the exorcism — where faith healers from multiple traditions are recruited, then bizarrely sidelined in the name of mainline Christianity — echoes Halloween Kills’ failed message of communal unity in the face of a great evil.

Though Universal and Blumhouse have plans for additional Exorcist movies, that doesn’t mean Green has to be a part of them— and the same goes for his involvement in Max’s Hellraiser series. Considering his lousy track record with horror properties, perhaps it’s time to perform an exorcism on his career in hopes of salvaging some semblance of a bright future.

Grade: D-plus. Rated R. Now playing at AMC River Hills 10, Carolina Cinemark, and Regal Biltmore Grande.

(Photo: Universal)