The Exorcist: Believer

The Exorcist: Believer is a 2023 American supernatural horror film directed by David Gordon Green, who co-wrote the screenplay with Peter Sattler from a story by Scott Teems, Danny McBride, and Green. The sixth installment in The Exorcist franchise, it serves as a sequel to The Exorcist (1973). The film stars Leslie Odom Jr., Lidya Jewett, Olivia O‘Neill in her film debut, Jennifer Nettles, Norbert Leo Butz and Ann Dowd, along with Ellen Burstyn and Linda Blair reprising their roles from the original film. Its plot follows a photographer who must confront the nadir of evil when his daughter and her best friend are possessed.
Jason Blum served as a producer on the film through his Blumhouse Productions banner, alongside David and James G. Robinson through their Morgan Creek Entertainment banner, in association with executive producers Green and McBride's Rough House Pictures. The project began as a sequel to the original film in December 2020. Universal Pictures collaborated with Peacock to acquire distribution rights in June 2021 for $400 million, with intentions of launching a new trilogy of The Exorcist films. Principal photography took place between November 2022 and March 2023 on a production budget of $30 million.
The Exorcist: Believer was released in the United States on October 6, 2023, and has grossed $121 million worldwide, receiving negative reviews from critics. Despite the reception, a sequel, entitled The Exorcist: Deceiver, is scheduled to be released on April 18, 2025.
Plot
In Haiti, photographer Victor Fielding and his pregnant wife Sorenne, blessed by a voodoo practitioner, are on their honeymoon until a massive earthquake ensues. Sorenne is gravely injured; she tells Victor to protect their unborn daughter, Angela. Paramedics tell Victor he must choose to save either his wife or his child.
Thirteen years later, Victor has lost his faith in God since Sorenne's death, while raising Angela on his own in Georgia. One day after school, Angela ventures into the woods with her Baptist best friend Katherine to perform a séance in an attempt to contact Angela's mother. Victor realizes his daughter is missing and contacts Katherine's parents, Miranda and Tony, as a three-day manhunt ensues.
The girls are found in a barn on the third day; though traumatized, they seem relatively normal and are taken home, having only suffered burn marks to their feet. The next day, Angela suddenly attacks Victor and begins convulsing, while Katherine has an outburst during a church service in which the sacrament of Holy Communion is observed. Victor admits Angela into a hospital where their nurse neighbor Ann attends to her, and Miranda begins to theorize that the girls traveled to Hell and brought a demon back with them, hence the burns to their feet.
The girls' condition worsens as their burns become more severe. Ann, convinced that Angela is possessed after the latter reveals her knowledge of Ann's experience in the novitiate as a prospective nun, which ended after a pregnancy that resulted in an abortion, gives Victor a memoir written by Chris MacNeil, who experienced a similar situation with her daughter Regan in 1973. Chris has spent her life researching exorcisms in every culture while becoming world-renowned for her studies. However, Regan became distant from her mother due to the memoir's success and has not seen her since.
Victor searches for Chris and takes her to the hospital to see Angela before going to Katherine's home. While Victor attends to Miranda and Tony, Chris goes upstairs and begins to perform her own deliverance ritual on Katherine. Katherine stabs Chris multiple times in the eyes with a cross, blinding her, and she is rushed to the hospital.
Victor, Miranda, Tony, and Ann reach out to the Church for an exorcism. Chris advises Victor to use methods from all different cultures, and the group seeks the help of Don Revans, Katherine's family's Baptist pastor; Stuart, a Pentecostal preacher; and Dr. Beehibe, a rootwork healer. The group plans an ecumenical exorcism, but the local Catholic diocese forbids Father Maddox from participating as they feel that the children are suffering from a psychiatric disorder.
The girls are tied to chairs as the group proceeds with the exorcism. Ann uses a crucifix with the Saint Benedict Medal engraved on it to battle the demon. The demon reveals that Victor did not choose to keep Angela alive thirteen years ago; he chose Sorenne but she died from her injuries. As Ann reads from the biblical text of Ezekiel 16 while holy water is poured on the children, the demon begins to shriek.
The demon tells him that he needs to choose which of the girls gets to live and which one will die, and if a choice is not made, it will kill them both. While Miranda and Victor both refuse to forsake each other's child, Maddox, who has a change of heart, rejoins the group. Maddox reads from the Roman Ritual, only for the demon to snap his neck and kill him. Victor regains his faith and begins to pray the Lord's Prayer, which he learned as a child. As Victor apologizes to Angela and uses Sorenne's scarf to attempt to strengthen her against the demon, Tony yells that he chooses Katherine, and Angela flatlines.
Suddenly, the demon reveals the one that was chosen would be the one who died. Katherine screams for her parents as the demon drags her to Hell, while Angela starts to breathe. Police arrive as Miranda and Tony fail to resuscitate Katherine and Victor tearfully reunites with his daughter.
In the aftermath, Victor visits Sorenne's grave, Miranda and Tony mourn the loss of Katherine, and Angela returns to school. In the hospital, Chris is reunited with Regan, who forgives her mother, and they emotionally embrace.
Cast
Production
Development
In August 2020, it was reported that Morgan Creek Entertainment would be producing a new installment in The Exorcist franchise. A tentative theatrical release window of 2021 was planned by the studio. Ben Pearson of Slash Film noted that the studio had previously stated that it would "never attempt to remake The Exorcist", but that it would also obtain the "blessings of their library titles' original creators before they move forward with new entries".
In December 2020, it was clarified that the project in development would be a sequel to the original film, with David Gordon Green in early negotiations to serve as director. Jason Blum, David Robinson and James Robinson serve as producers. In July 2021, it was reported that a trilogy of sequels were concurrently in development with Green hired to direct the first of the new installments, from a script he co-wrote with Peter Sattler, from an original story he co-wrote with Scott Teems and Danny McBride. Green, McBride, Couper Samuelson and Stephanie Allain serve as executive producers. Prior to acquiring the series' rights from Morgan Creek Entertainment, the writing team and Blum spent early 2020 devising the story over Zoom.
The projects are joint-venture productions between Blumhouse Productions and Morgan Creek Entertainment with Universal Pictures distributing. Universal collaborated with Peacock to purchase distribution rights for $400 million total. Parts two and three of the trilogy were optioned as potential Peacock exclusive films. By October 2021, Green expressed his intentions to direct all three films, with script outlines completed for the latter two films that he co-wrote with Sattler.
Casting
Ellen Burstyn reprised her role as Chris MacNeil from the original film, with Leslie Odom Jr. co-starring as a father who tracks down Chris to help his possessed child. Ann Dowd, Lidya Jewett, Olivia Marcum and Okwui Okpokwasili were also cast. Raphael Sbarge joined the cast as a pastor. Jennifer Nettles has a "primary role" in the film.
Filming
In early 2022, Burstyn stated that she had completed production for her part in the film. Though Green had previously stated that he would begin work on the sequel after completing Halloween Ends (2022), given the actress' age and the risks of the COVID-19 pandemic, the production team worked with Burstyn to make sure they had her part completed for the film. Linda Blair, who portrayed Regan MacNeil in the first film, was an "advisor" on set. Green stated to Total Film that "I was really lucky to have [Blair] read the script, but she was not interested in a significant role and stepping back into that. We brought her in as an advisor because we're dealing with young people, and we want to take them to dangerous places safely".
On a production budget of $30 million, principal photography began in November 2022, in Atlanta and Savannah, Georgia. Burstyn was brought in that month for reshoots. In mid-December, production was shut down early for the holidays after Odom had an "unspecified health issue". Filming concluded in early March 2023.
Release
The Exorcist: Believer was released by Universal Pictures in the United States on October 6, 2023. It was previously set for October 13, before being moved up a week earlier to avoid competition with the concert film Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour.
Home media
The film was released on digital platforms by Universal Pictures Home Entertainment on October 24, 2023.
Reception
Box office
, The Exorcist: Believer has grossed $59.9 million in the United States and Canada, and $61.1 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $121 million.
In the United States and Canada, The Exorcist: Believer was projected to gross $30–36 million from 3,663 theaters its opening weekend. The film made $11.8 million on its first day, including $2.9 million from Thursday night previews. It went on to debut to $26.5 million, topping the box office and being the best of the franchise, but was noted as disappointing given mid-$30 million projections and the $400 million Universal spent to acquire the rights. The film made $11 million in its second weekend, finishing second behind newcomer Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour.
Critical response
The film received negative reviews from critics. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C" on an A+ to F scale, the same as The Exorcist III and Exorcist: The Beginning, while those polled by PostTrak gave it a 61% positive score.
Owen Gleiberman, writing for Variety, said in his review: "The Exorcist: Believer, in its superficially competent and poshly mounted way, feels about as dangerous as a crucifix dipped in a bottle of designer water". David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter said: "Unlike Green's Halloween trilogy, which served up diminishing returns with each new installment, Believer condenses that downward trajectory into the first chapter" and called the film "hella disappointing". In Plugged In, Paul Asay praised the film for its theme of emphasizing the importance of faith and community in rescuing the oppressed. John Mulderig in the Catholic Review noted: "William Friedkin['s] Watergate-era picture ... was a fairly straightforward confrontation between Regan's tormentor and two Catholic priests. [D]riving away of the devil here, by contrast, takes on the qualities of a circus[,] thus promot[ing] a syncretist, humanistic and even vaguely anti-Catholic outlook that could be spiritually dangerous for anyone inclined to take it seriously. On the whole, however, this half-a-century-later follow-up is best dismissed as... chaotic schlock."
USA Today Brian Truitt gave the film a score of three out of four. He noted Burstyn's limited screen time, writing: "Odom gets a meatier character arc than Burstyn did back in the day, and while her return isn't as integral to the story as Jamie Lee Curtis' was to the rebooted Halloween, Chris' appearance adds needed weight to the Believer narrative. [...] With a formidable Believer and two more Exorcist movies in the pipeline, though, at least this franchise still has a prayer". Olly Richards of Empire felt differently about Burstyn's role: "The role feels gimmicky rather than essential and sets the film on a cheesier path of call-backs, winks, and attempts to one-up the original. It becomes a tribute act, its own personality shrinking in the shadow of a classic".
Stephanie Zacharek, in Time, notes, "As for Green’s Exorcist: Believer, which starts out strong—evoking all the reasons demons in search of a body to possess can’t resist the hormonal lightning rod of adolescent girls—and ends in a dumb jumble of generic-looking zombie-girl Blumhouse special effects: I’ve already forgotten it. Odom is a terrific actor[:] But poor Ellen Burstyn. Long after refusing to appear in Exorcist II, she agrees to show up in this thing—as the older version of Chris, now the ultimate coastal grandma, dressed in floaty, flattering white scarves and ropes of crystal beads—only to get about 10 minutes of screen time, during which her character suffers a needless and stupid indignity. Though it’s not something she could have known some 47 years ago, Burstyn said yes to the wrong Exorcist sequel. If only she’d chosen the one with poetry in its soul."
Future
In July 2021, two sequels were confirmed to be in development with the same creative team of Green, McBride, Sattler and Teems on board. The first of these sequels, The Exorcist: Deceiver, will be released in theaters April 18, 2025. After the poor reception of Believer, sources from The Hollywood Reporter claim there will almost certainly be some degree of creative re-think for the next two films, and that Green recently expressed some doubt about his participation.
Notes
References
External links
2023 films
2023 horror films
2020s English-language films
2020s supernatural horror films
American sequel films
American supernatural drama films
American supernatural horror films
Blumhouse Productions films
Demons in film
The Exorcist films
Films about exorcism
Films directed by David Gordon Green
Films scored by David Wingo
Films with screenplays by David Gordon Green
Films with screenplays by Danny McBride
Films produced by Jason Blum
Films impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic
Films shot in Atlanta
Films shot in Savannah, Georgia
Morgan Creek Productions films
Religious horror films
Universal Pictures films
Works by Scott Teems
2020s American films
IMAX films
4DX films