The Devil is in the Pigtails

Whatever your opinion of David Gordon Green's Halloween trilogy its hard to deny he took a big swing at it and The Exorcist: Believer has a lot in common with the director's 2018 revitalisation of that franchise. Like Halloween 2018 this film ignores every previous sequel and is a direct follow up to the original Exorcist. Like Halloween 2018 this film sticks pretty closely to beats of the original but with heightened stakes (more kills for Halloween, twice the number of possessed kids here). Unlike Halloween 2018 this film isn't a complete success.

Not that The Exorcist: Believer is a write off by any means. Having two friends be possessed is a nice way of distinguishing proceedings from the sea of other possession films we have seen over the last few years and adds an extra layer to dealing with the situation, not only does the worried father need to deal with what is happening to his daughter but also with another family and their beliefs on what should be done. The possessed kids are suitably creepy and the film has an interesting take on the notion of an exorcism and faith. Rather than the strictly Christian depiction of the 70's original, Believer references the fact that some sort of demonic possession is present in many belief systems and the faith required to battle such things isn't tied to any particular religion, hinting at interesting directions the series could take going forward. The film's biggest selling point is an outstanding performance from Leslie Odom Jr. as single father Victor. His emotion and believability really sell proceedings and leave the viewer hoping things work out for him and his daughter.

Unfortunately, Believer drops the ball in two crucial areas. Firstly, the pacing of the movie leading up to the exorcism is too slow. There is a section where the two girls are missing that is dragged out to the point it feels the film is going to be a missing person drama. This falls flat as there are zero stakes, we know the girls are going to turn up. Later in the film a legacy character turns up what could have been a cool cameo but ends up turning the film into a sideshow. The other problem it has is in portraying the events of the Exorcism itself. Things are tense but it's unclear the procedure is actually progressing. Are all the things they are trying failing or are the setbacks just part of every exorcism? Is this a particularly hard to expel demon or is everything going as planned? It's harder to buy into the drama without having any idea how close success or failure is.

So what the film does well is mostly undermined, leaving it with only its famous name to really distinguish it from all the other possession flicks out there. Still, if you're a fan of the genre you'll probably find yourself entertained.

6 people saved from 10 "you can save your daughter or your wife" situations.

Comments

An Apple a Day

Bad Apples opens with a colourful procession of apples making their way through a processing facility. There is a problem, though: stowing away is a solitary child's trainer, hidden amongst the apples and about to jam up the machine and bring the whole enterprise to a halt. Turns out a bad kid can do the same to a classroom, as poor Miss Maria Spencer (Saoirse Ronan) knows only too well. This darkly comic satire doesn't go much deeper than the above metaphor but it entertains and is propelled by a trio of strong performances. The offending trainer belongs to Danny (Eddie Waller), a disruptive pupil whose out of control behaviour has the timid Maria on the verge of losing her job. When Danny seriously injures another pupil and gets suspended, Maria goes to see his dad but ends up in a scuffle with the troublemaking youngster that leads to her imprisoning him in her basement. With the rascal out of the picture and nobody missing him much, things start to look pretty rosy for t...

One Dog and his Man

Heart of the Beast is a man and his dog against nature film. As such, it requires a lead who can be tough but also vulnerable and has the screen presence to draw the audience in without dialogue. This film has such a lead. It also has Brad Pitt. See, the star of the show really is ex-army dog Odin (played by a German Shepherd named Uber, with three of his sons helping out). Odin has metal teeth, an artificial leg and suffers from PTSD but soldiers on with the joyous spirit only a dog can muster. It's just as well, since he is the only thing holding his human, retired Special Forces Command Sergeant Major James Belmont (Pitt) together. Belmont is himself haunted by nightmares of the mission that left him and Odin as sole survivors and it's safe to say he isn't a people person. The pair are exploring the Alaskan wilderness when a potential heart attack leads to Belmont crashing his little plane and leaving them with an arduous and dangerous trek back to civilisation. That thi...

Sick in the Mud

Like its shape shifting titular character, Clayface attempts to be many things. Billed as DC's first horror movie, it is also a supervillain origin story, a modern-gothic romance, a tragedy and a crime drama. With all this in the pot, what it actually ends up feeling like is a throwback to the '90s/early 2000s era of comic book adaptations. A time of modest budgets for the genre, when studios cared less about shared world continuity and were prepared to let filmmakers have some fun with weird characters. Tom Rhys Harris stars as Matt Hagen, an actor who got out of the Gotham City slums and is now Academy Award nominated. His high flying life comes crashing down when he has a one night stand with the girlfriend of a prominent Gotham mobster and is left hideously scarred by the scorned gangster's vengeance. With his career in ruins, he finds showbiz loyalty in short supply as his manager, lawyer and possibly even his best friend quickly abandon him. Scientist Dr. Caitlyn Co...

Predator Chadlands

After revitalising the Predator franchise with 2022's Prey, director Dan Trachtenberg brings us a very different take on the extraterrestrial big game hunter. In Predator: Badlands , the titular monster is the main character. Considering how terrible that premise could have been, we actually end up with a decent action adventure movie. Our protagonist is Dek, a Yautja (the species name of the Predators) who is considered something of a runt. Such a runt in fact, that his dad wants to kill him for being a pitiful disgrace to the clan. After his brother saves him, he makes his way to "the Death Planet" Genna to hunt a supposedly unkillable monster in order to show his father who is boss and force the rest of the clan to put some respect on his name. When he gets there he discovers that, not only is all the wildlife deadly, but Weyland-Yutani ( yes, the evil corporation from Alien) have sent a bunch of synths there to collect and weaponise his prospective trophy. He forms an...

Irreverent Evil

Despite its singular name, Resident Evil is actually the eighth film to be based on the long running video game franchise. Unlike Paul W.S. Anderson's decade plus running series and 2021's failed reboot, Welcome to Raccoon City, this new effort from Weapons helmer Zach Cregger uses none of the game's characters or plot lines. Ironically, ditching the baggage has allowed Cregger to craft something that comes much closer to matching the camp terror of its source material and is easily the best film to wear the Resident Evil name. The entire film follows medical courier Bryan (Austin Abrams) on the delivery from hell. Despite being in the middle of a phone argument with his pregnant girlfriend, Brian accepts one last job for the day; a drop-off in remote Raccoon City. The icy roads he is ill prepared for turn out to be the least of his worries as something has gone very wrong in the mountain city. After running a woman over in the town outskirts, things quickly escalated and...

Straight Outta The Further

Insidious has always been a fairly low tier horror franchise. The Conjuring's budget cousin, if you will. If you look at it that way then Insidious: Out of the Further is actually fairly good. It's certainly the most entertaining the series has been since the first instalment. Like that first breakout hit from back in 2010, Out of the Further has a much stronger first half than it does second. We start with a fairly harrowing scene of a young girl named Gemma witnessing the grisly death of her erratically behaving mother. We then fast forward a couple of decades to find the adult Gemma working as a dentist while raising a young girl of her own, yet still living in her childhood home. Spooky things begin to happen as some unfriendly OAPs start stalking the neighbourhood and Gemma tries to keep her daughter safe while worrying she is becoming like her mother. In typical Insidious fashion, things become more silly than scary as the plot is revealed and we build towards a ludicr...

Eight is the Loneliest Number of Legs

Spider-Man: Brand New Day swings into cinemas to deliver a much needed box office shot in the arm to the once invincible MCU and prove that the wall crawler is Marvel's most enduring hero. It delivers on the Spiderman feeling but loses steam as the 2 hour 20 minute runtime rolls on. Since everyone he cares about is either dead or has forgotten him after the events of No Way Home, Peter Parker (Tom Holland) has been focusing solely on his Spider-Man duties. As a result, he has more or less eradicated organised crime in New York and is idolised by the city populace. On the downside, he is devoid of real human contact apart from phone calls to a detective and a grudging pseudo-friendship with gun toting vigilante Frank Castle (Jon Bernthal), aka The Punisher. He still pines after his lost relationships with MJ (Zendaya) and Ned (Jacob Batalon) and it seems his isolation is beginning to have a physical effect on him. This couldn't come at a worse time, with a new threat that can s...

Dance of Death

John Wick spin off, Ballerina , swaps out Keanu Reaves (mostly) for Ana de Armas but almost everything else remains pretty similar. We still have the intricately choreographed fighting in a dark gloss colour palette, minimal plot propped up by ridiculous lore and the same waffling dialogue. Series die hards rejoice, but for someone who zoned out somewhere during Chapter 3 and was distinctly unimpressed with John Wick 4, these films are becoming something of a chore. Eve Macarro (de Armas) is orphaned at a young age when assassins break into her home in an attempt to abduct her and her father (also an assassin) dies fighting them off. She is then raised by the "Ruska Roma" (more assassins, roughly 40% of the worlds population are assassins in the world of John Wick), who train her in the arts of both ballet and murder. After somebody from the faction that killed her dad attempts to off her, she embarks on a revenge quest, despite being explicitly forbidden from doing so by R...

2025 Movies Ranked

Another year in the rear view mirror means another ranking of every new release film I caught in the cinema this year. Despite 75 films making the list there are some fairly big omissions so if your favourite isn't on here, just imagine it up near the top. Also, we are talking UK releases. 75. The Stranger Chapter 2 This lame duck franchise props up the rankings for the second year in a row. A little more happens this time round but there is no jeopardy since we know the protagonist needs to make it to part 3. Also undermines its main premise (people might just decide to murder you for no reason) by giving the masked killers backstory. At least a section with a wild boar trying to gut somebody means the audience aren't the only ones nearly bored to death. 74. Hurry Up Tomorrow When a musician decides to write and star in their own movie the results are often pompus nonsense, so the problem with this effort from Abel "The Weeknd" Tesfaye isn't that its ridiculous...

A Barbillion Bucks

Barbie, like The Lego Movie, is a product film based on a product so successful it doesn't need to sell said product and instead uses the guaranteed exposure to tell its own fairly unique story. Barbies of various type live in "Barbie Land" where every day is pink and perfect (for the Barbies at least) . When generic Barbie begins having thoughts about death and experiencing flat feet she has journey to the real world, accompanied by tag along, wannabe boyfriend Ken. Revealing much more of the story would be a bit of a spoiler given how well the marketing has kept the nitty gritty of precedings hidden but it's safe to say the ensuing story is possibly the most meta film ever made. It comments on Barbie's place in the world, some "interesting" missteps Matel has made with the doll, and the irony of the company having an all male board before you even get to the feminist and class culture stuff. Even the movie's casting is meta. Having Margot Robbie,...

Dan Says its Alright

Search This Blog