There are three types of Exorcist sequel: the instantly forgettable, the memorably awful and The Exorcist III. The latest installment, directed by David Gordon Green and co-produced by Blumhouse, is not as miserably generic as the naughties prequel (either version – there’s two), but nor is it the interesting misfire of William Peter Blatty’s 1990 threequel (either version – there’s two). And thankfully it’s not the car crash of Exorcist II: The Heretic. It has elements of all of those in both its strengths and weaknesses, however, and ultimately suffers the same central issue they all do: it’s standing in the shadow of a masterpiece, and it can’t stop pointing at it.
Having had reasonable success sequalising Halloween with Jamie Lee Curtis, Green has been given the keys to one of the horror cinema’s unholy grails: a trilogy marking 50 years of the late Bill Friedkin’s The Exorcist. Like his Halloween, Green has a new cast to play with, and a returning horror icon – here Ellen Burstyn’s Chris McNeil – to add credibility. The story sees two 13-year-old-girls, Katherine (Olivia Marcum) and Angela (Lidya Jewett) disappear into the local woods, turning up three days later with blistered feet and no memory of where they’ve been. If you’ve seen the original Exorcist, or any of the numerous possession movies that followed in its wake, you’ll have a good idea what happens next.
It actually starts rather well. Centering around Angela’s widower father, Victor (a great, soulful performance by Leslie Odom Jr.), the first act is slow-burning and genuinely creepy. Green is smart enough to not overplay his hand with the set up, and keeps the unfolding mystery obscure and the scares smart. He’s also nodding to the visual palette of Friedkin’s original – tracking shots, muted colours, deep focus – which keeps things satisfyingly Exorcisty without projectile vomiting its links to the franchise in our faces. At least at first. The restraint is uncharacteristic and to the filmmaker’s credit. It works.
Unfortunately it can’t last, because the second half is a mess. There’s a hodgepodge of interesting ideas here – notably asking why the Catholics get to have all the fun whenever the power of christ is needed to compel something –and there’s a bold (and quite nasty) decision made toward the end that suggests Green does have some courage behind his convictions, but none of it really hangs together. It’s so tonally disjointed that you suspect some major post-shoot surgery has been at play—like someone decided there weren’t enough obvious callbacks to the 1973 original and demanded some be dropped in, pronto. The scars of that surgery are as livid as those on poor Angela’s legs.
Those callbacks are the biggest problem here. Many of the beats in the cringingly multi-denominational exorcism feel like stale retreads of Friedkin’s masterpiece rather than homage, Ellen Burstyn’s Chris is criminally underused and badly underwritten, and when ‘Tubular Bells’ rears its head (a piece of music used only briefly in the original) it feels obligatory rather than effective. And sadly, that’s representative of the film in general.
It’s a shame, because the opening 45-minutes is strong, and the cast broadly good, especially Odom Jr. and newcomer Jewett, who is wonderfully creepy when possessed and finds some real layers in her character before that. Had this not been so in thrall to its classic progenitor it could have pulled off something interesting. Alas, the film throws away its good will on a patchy, disjointed and unlikeable third act. There’s two more entries in the franchise to come. It’s hard to be excited about them.
