Any resemblance between “The Exorcist” and “The Exorcist: Believer” is purely intentional.
The new film, however, has two possessed teenagers, an ecumenical look at exorcism and a guest appearance by Ellen Burstyn as the actress who had to put up with a head-spinning daughter 50 years earlier.
The changes are slight but they’re not enough, just more of the same.
Tony winner Leslie Odom Jr. stars as a photographer who’s raising his teenage daughter (Lidya Jewett) in Georgia. They survived an earthquake in Haiti; his wife didn’t. Because dad can’t watch her all the time, Angela slips into the woods with a friend, Katherine (Olivia O’Neill), and the two go missing for three days, unsure what happened.
Quickly, they begin to show signs of some kind of possession. Could they have been molested? Threatened? Drugged?
Family members try to figure out why they’re distant but soon, the girls are writhing, vomiting and wetting the bed. A nurse sizes up the situation and thinks it’s not physical. Having read a book Burstyn’s character wrote, she’s convinced this tracks possession, chapter and verse.
Director David Gordon Green, who rebooted the “Halloween” franchise, looks for new life here, but only manages to spread the concern to other religions. One girl avoids religion; the other goes to a Protestant church and hasn’t been baptized. In the hospital, at home and at church, they begin acting out. The nurse (nicely played by Ann Dowd) sends for reinforcement and finds a priest who isn’t willing. That means others have to step up – including someone with those voodoo-like shaker skills.
When the girls’ parents (including singer Jennifer Nettles and “Wicked’s” Norbert Leo Butz) try to help, they’re targeted by the demon. Here, “Believer” trades on past hits. Burstyn dips in a couple of times, but she’s there merely to give the film its street cred. Green gives her a turn that’s reminiscent of Jamie Lee Curtis’ in the “Halloween” reboots. She also cracks the door to the next film and reminds this was done better.
Jewett and O’Neill are so burdened by makeup it’s hard to see them acting. In the original “Exorcist,” Linda Blair was frightening. You felt her pain and wanted to get the devil out of the theater.
In “Believer,” there are boxes being checked. (Whether the characters are out of the woods is anyone’s guess.) What it really lacks is that driving score that made “Tubular Bells” a phenomenon in the 1970s.
When Green treads too heavily into the past it’s clear his “Believer” is out of its league. Director William Friedkin played with many elements of filmmaking. Green settles for obvious touchstones. When he offers a surprise at the end, it’s a little too late for this film but a likely starting point for another.
Even though possession is nine-tenths of the plot, it never takes hold. That requires much, much more.
Movie critic Bruce Miller says "Fair Play" is easily one of the most compelling films of the year.
