Let’s not all sit around confused about the title of this one, it is not The Exorcist: Belieber, even though the hysterical teenage girls in the trailer may make you think such a thing. Am I right? No, instead, this film is about sisterhood and the devil, which I personally align my beliefs with, along with my teenage obsession with Justin Bieber.
50 arduous years after the seminal horror classic The Exorcist released, David Gorden Green has decided to grace us with a revisit to the world of foul mouthed, weak bladdered demons.
We begin our story where all popcorn horrors should begin, in an uncomfortably ambitious retelling of the 7.0 magnitude Haitian earthquake which took the lives of around 300,000 people. We get a very unnecessary story point about this to catalyse our tale into 2023, with Victor (Leslie Odom Jr.) and Angela (Lidya Jewett) living in Georgia, in a basically dilapidated house. Angela is a bit of a # Loner except for the friendship she has in Katherine (Olivia O’Neill) whom she shares a spiritual connection with. So much so that they decide to venture out in the woods to do some hypnotism, summoning the dead so that Angela can talk to her mother again.
Obviously, that leads to some unwanted folks entering the vessels of both Angela and Katherine, possessing them to be dismissed as mentally unwell before badly dubbed demons take over these girls’ voices to communicate otherwise unknown facts. From here, not to spoil anything, but we do travel down the exorcism route to try and return these girls back to their original manors. That leads into all sorts of questionable shenanigans and some forced fanfare cameos.
Now its time to talk about the scares, and the general lack of them. We have a long section of story setup in the beginning with zero jumps of builds of tension. Even in its infinite cliches, it fails at the fakeout jumpscare cliche to get your heart going in the setup portion of the film. The middle section has about three jumpscares, cheap and without tension at all. They are loud and quick, not scary, but effective in their singular moment.
For the most part, there was zero tension built up in the film at all. They fail to create an atmosphere even close to the original, or any horror film that I’ve seen recently.
The film isn’t saved in its acting, but the two girls give it everything they’ve got to salvage the film. Lidya Jewett and Olivia O’Neill don’t nail the demonic voices, causing some terribly dubbed voices to be introduced, but in their movements and commitment, they sell it pretty well. Leslie Odom Jr. is fine, he is a vaguely grieving dad that at times loses some concern for his daughter who is writhing around with a demon speaking of her mouth. You know who is not losing concern though? Norbert Leo Butz (the dad of Katherine), as he gives the most melodramatic dad I have seen in a while. He kicks over bins, shouts most of his lines and sits and sulks in moments of “tension”. We do get Ellen Burstyn reprising her role as Chris from the original film. At ninety years old, she brings in about five minutes of screen time before dipping out to enjoy her paycheck.
Luckily, we also have incredibly boring camera work to enjoy while the other events go on around it. The only section which I feel was done with any creative intent was the opening in Haiti, which is fleeting and also weirdly tasteless for the film it’s in anyway.
Sound follows the theme and is notably bad, with some dialogue being mixed too low, all of the ADR lines being thrown into the film without any consideration for sync or realism.
The movie is also weirdly quiet throughout, particularly in the first half, with very little music being used. In another film, you could argue that they may be trying to build atmosphere with this. It doesn’t build atmosphere, it just made it really awkward to eat popcorn.
Ready for a complement, the makeup was pretty good!
This is not a good film. It doesn’t really do anything to justify it’s 400 million purchase by Universal. There is no improvement, no reinvention. The whole movie feels like a suggestion in a boardroom after they panic bought a near half billion franchise and suggested they remake the first but add in a second girl. The reasoning for this plot point comes into play right at the end of the film in a pretty weirdly intentioned message about choices and “God’s” impact on those decisions. I do not think this new proposed trilogy could have started in a worse place, setting expectations in the demon's home of hell for the remaining two entries.
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