THE EXORCIST: BELIEVER

Linda Blair in THE EXORCIST: BELIEVER Year: 2023 Rating: *
Ellen Burstyn's Chris MacNeil complaining that she wasn't allowed to actually witness the exorcism of her daughter Regan, played by Linda Blair, would be like the mother of a kidnapped child being bitter and angry that she wasn't present when her child was saved in a house full of armed, dangerous felons (who wind up killing the men saving her)... And, get this... she BLAMES the Catholic church for basically being chauvinistic...  

Underlining the fact that the original EXORCIST, although originally deemed demonic itself to Christians and Catholics, can now be considered Faith-based being that without God, there is no Satan at all...  

Ellen Burstyn in THE EXORCIST BELIEVER

That said, BELIEVER sluggishly plays-out like a cheap, too-darkly-shot, CGI-filled straight-to-streaming throwaway that is simply no fun at all... and yes, the original classic has many moments of the audience not only reacting to terrifying possession scenes with Linda Blair, but getting to know the other two main characters with both intensity and sarcasm, in particular Burstyn and younger priest Jason Miller as Karras... who, in the William Friedkin classic, wound up the 11th-hour sacrificing hero while the absence of the latter (i.e. a solid central protagonist) takes away from this movie's expository structure even beyond having two girls possessed instead of one... because you never get to know either girl enough to base an entire 2-hour movie on... 

Starting out with the girls lost in the woods, involving a cult of homeless freaks, there's a rudimentary glimpse of intrigue, and perhaps they could have centered more perspective on the pair and their own spooky pre-possessed plight: but all that's quickly abandoned, replaced with what's basically a replica of the original yet without any real suspense or, with a stressed-out single father in charge, no logical reason or any purpose and, news just came out that they're abandoning a sequel to this sequel and starting over with a NEW reboot instead... which is important information lacking in any review written before May 30th, 2024...  So whatever did POSSESS this film's creation has thankfully been exorcised, forever. 

Linda Blair in THE EXORCIST: BELIEVER

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