The Exorcist: Believer is what Red Letter Media calls a "requel." That means it's a reboot disguised as a sequel -- it pretends to be a continuation of the original story, but in fact it's simply a copy-paste re-do of the original story.
Like The Force Awakens was a straight-up rewrite of Star Wars but they pretended it was a new story. It wasn't. It was the old story with a "diverse" cast and new merchandising opportunities cute droids.
But requels are now commonplace. Artistically bankrupt, of course, but this Hollywood. Artistic bankruptcy is their stock in trade.
What's more interesting is how woke it is.
Put that aside for the moment. The Exorcist: Believer is one of the worst-received movies of the year, despite its wokeness. Even though it's super-woke (in a demon possession story? what?), it's so bad that leftwing critics are still savaging it.
Universal paid $400 million for The Exorcist rights, and The Exorcist: Believer is earning worse reviews than Halloween Ends (2022).
$400 million. Can you believe it?
And they're planning a trilogy, they say. Of course they have to plan that: If you spend $400 million on a dead IP, you have to make at least three movies to amortize those costs over as many pieces of shit as possible.
But given the reviews, they may not even get to make a sequel.
Halloween Ends, a movie I hate more than PBS, earned a 40 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The Exorcist: Believer is getting murdered with just a 22 percent fresh rating.
...
So after crash-landing the Halloween franchise into a fireball of lame, Universal paid $400 million so Green and McBride could run a flaccid train on The Exorcist, which is a movie that cannot be franchised.
The whole idea of franchising The Exorcist is absurd. All you can do is dry-hump the formula over and over and over, which is what all four --four! --sequels prior to Believer did.
And it's what this one does again. Except this time, there are two possessed 12-year-olds -- talk about upping the stakes! -- and one of them is black!
Current Year Relevance! Whoo-hoo!
Apparently David Gordon Green and Danny McBride thought that what the movie going public was hungering for in an Exorcist requel was offensively blatant woke political messaging.
That would be their "edge."
Three points:
1, Ellen Burstyn played a non-believing atheist in The Exorcist. Her presence in a room where an exorcism relying on absolute faith in God and Christ would have been, how you say?, unhelpful.
2, she also played a woman who was having a nervous breakdown over the possession. Think Pazuzu could have gotten her to flip her lid during the exorcism? I do.
3, the priests she is now cursing as "the Patriarchy" both gave their lives to save her daughter. They both died. One died of bodily and spiritual exhaustion, the other offered himself as a new vessel for the demon and then jumped out of a window to destroy that vessel.
Spoiler alert for a 50 year old movie.
As Hillary Clinton says: The first victims in war are always women and children.
How dare you.
If you think that's just one line, no.
Red Letter Media attempt to stay out of the culture wars. In fact, they more often mock criticisms of films being "woke" than they'll actually acknowledge films as woke.
It's for that reason -- and just generally being tired of their schtick -- that I stopped watching their videos.
But even they have to mention the unending wokeness in this movie:
First, the Patriarchy line just discussed.
Then, the fact that there are two girls now possessed, and one of them is black. Mike Stoklasa explains this: They wanted to do a race-flip of the family, but the studio objected that they needed to keep it close to the original they were copying, so they said "Well if we have two possessed girls from two different families we can make one white and one black! Diversity!"
He doesn't know that but of course he knows that. We all know that's exactly what happened.
Third, and you're going to believe this: The film takes the position that religion is silly and God Is a Lie so of course they can't call in stodgy Catholic priests to do the exorcism. That would be, of course, Patriarchal. And Christianist.
So guess who they call in to do the exorcism?
(Take a minute and write your answers below.)
You probably got it right because the answer is they call in a DIVERSITY of religious or "spiritual" authorities to conduct the exorcism as a Woke United Religions of Benneton parade.
Not only do they call in all religions, but all non-religions, too: They say they have "spiritualists" who actually disbelieve in God taking part in the exorcism.
We couldn't have a demon be non-diverse in the religious symbols that cause it pain.
Fourth, the father of the white girl is, guess what?
(I'll give you a moment to write your answer to this one too.)
Yes that's right, he's explicitly a Trump supporter, and guess what his evil selfishness causes?
I'll give you another moment to write your answer.
The devil apparently (and I'm not clear on this point, but this is what I think they meant) gives the parents a choice of which child can be saved and which will be condemned to hell, and the white Trump supporter makes a selfish choice (what would be the alternative here? Saying "Take my daughter, Satan"?) and then Satan (or Pazuzu) laughs and this innocent 12-year-old girl is sent to hell to be tortured for all eternity. Because this Trump-Supporting MAGA scumbag didn't give the Devil the right answer.
And I have a strong feeling the audience is supposed to think "Yeah, Satan, you get that no-good Trump-spawn!"
Christian Toto adds a little more:
The film's third act is a mess, neither scary nor spiritually significant. In fact, the sequel has a beef with the faith behind the original masterpiece. The Catholic Church.
The Church refuses to help Victor and Katherine's parents (one-dimensional Christians), referring the matter to psychiatric professionals.
Talk about cutting a franchise off at the knees. It's like making a new James Bond movie and having him reject both the Crown and MI-6 entirely.
The attempt to save the poor girls turns into a Kumbaya affair, with different faiths gathering to beat the demon back. It takes a village to exorcise your children, apparently.
We're even treated to a girl power moment where a secondary female character steps in to save the day when a man refuses to do the job.
Of course. Of course!
Bravo ! Bravo ! Bravo !
But even with all that woke messaging, critics are still savaging this. So it's a stinker.
The film made $27.5 million over the weekend, which would be good for a horror movie, except if that horror movie spent $400 million on the rights alone.
If this is a single movie play, the film would have to make over a billion dollars to break even.
I know they want to make a trilogy, but can they if they only brought in meh horror movie money? I guess they have no choice -- they can't just use the $400 million in rights on this one piece of shit.
Maybe they'll just reduce the budgets of the sequels to the requel down to almost zero dollars.
Below, Chris Gore and Allen Ng rip the movie apart, and then the Red Letter Media review of the retarded requel.
Jay says that as a sequel to The Exorcist the film is dogshit, but as a stand-alone generic possession movie, it's also dogshit.
One thing Mike and Jay both agree on is how weird it is that the David Gordon Green and Danny McBride decided to pander to the Godless Generation Stupid by taking God out of a movie about demon possession.
I mean, I get it, belief is down. But this is an IP based upon the idea of Satan (or Pazuzu, I can never tell) possessing a little girl. You can't write God out of it.
If there is no God, what are you fighting Satan with? The power of friendship?!
Even if you don't want God in the movie -- He's kind of a central character you just can't write out. He's necessary to the plot.
Though they seem to have done so. The "exorcism" consists of a bunch of hippie weirdos getting together and chanting about "love" or whatever. And then probably smoking grass on JackStraw's Fornication Boat.
I am loving Hollywood burning itself down to the very roots.
If they're now destroying horror movies -- the only movies that make money for a reasonable cost -- that's just delightful.