(REVIEW) It’s fitting that we have so many exorcist movies this year given it’s the 50th anniversary of The original 1973 “The Exorcist.” The movie that legitimized horror (being the first horror film to be nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards) and became one of the highest-grossing movies of all time, spawning an entire genre. 

This year alone, we had Hollywood cash grabs like “The Pope’s Exorcist,” faith-based social commentary thrillers like “Nefarious” and documentaries of growing Pentecostal deliverance ministries (what they call exorcisms). There’s clearly an interest in this topic — and there’s never been a better time for the original franchise to reclaim its crown.

Unfortunately, this latest installment not only doesn’t live up to the original (which nobody expected), but attempts to invert the original’s themes to give a new interpretation of what faith should be that ends up being laughably hollow. “The Exorcist: Believer” wants to “update” the original film by denying real faith and replacing it with a modern sense of community, but only succeeds in updating itself into irrelevancy.

LISTEN: Is This The Year Of Faith-Based Films?

The movie follows what happens when two girls disappear into the woods and return three days later with no memory of what happened to them. The father of one girl seeks out Chris MacNeil, who's been forever altered by what happened to her daughter 50 years ago.

There are genuinely good things about “The Exorcist: Believer.” The film captures some of what made the original movie good by spending so much time on the characters just like a regular grounded drama before becoming a supernatural horror. When they do have conversations about faith, many genuinely feel like the conversations around faith that I have had or would have in a situation like this with people of various beliefs. One character’s story regarding their history with abortion was surprising but also deeply moving. I also liked that some of the heroes we thought would save the day don’t, paralleling how the expected heroes of science and psychology in the first film are helpless against the demon. 

The movie’s greatest strength is also its biggest, and most baffling, missed opportunity. Unlike the original film, which pits modern secular science against the supernatural, this movie features multiple characters with several belief systems and interpretations of what’s possessing the young girls who have to come together to stop them. And yet, they barely develop the beliefs of the characters outside the atheist dad and barely show the different groups in conflict. The conflict of “who’s interpretation is correct” never goes anywhere and the catharsis of having everyone put aside their differences and come together is non-existent.

That said — beyond its thematic problems, which we’ll get to later — the movie ultimately lands fairly generically. Once the demonic possessions start, there’s very little that feels different from what we’ve seen in exorcisms time and time again. There’s a couple of disturbing moments and a bit more nihilism than normal, but nothing that sticks. Even its attempts at subversive nihilism was done better in this year’s “Talk To Me.” There’s a sense in which the movie doesn’t have anything really to say or any reason to return to this franchise again.

That’s not quite true. It does have something to say, but what it has to say completely inverts what made the original so popular, which is why the movie ultimately feels so shallow. The original “Exorcist” was part of a larger common theme of some of the most classic blockbusters of the late 1970s and ‘80s. Whether it was “Jaws” or “Star Wars” or “Halloween” or “Die Hard,” a familiar refrain of these movies was the inability of the modern world to be able to stand up to the evil that exists in this world. In other words, the need for the old-fashioned values and beliefs to combat them, whether that’s the shark from “Jaws,” the empire in “Star Wars,” a deranged killer that’s “pure evil” in “Halloween” or bank robbers in “Die Hard.”

“The Exorcist” was the most explicit among these movies, featuring a girl possessed by a demon who has a mother with the wealth and resources to give her every cure money and modern science can buy. One by one, every resource of the modern age is rendered useless — until the mother has to turn back to the church that feels like an archaic institution she’s barely thought about it.

“Exorcist: Believer” also follows the prevailing theme of many of our modern blockbusters. Unlike the previous trend, this is not to return to the old values and myths, but to rewrite them to fit our modern worldview. The “Star Wars” sequels had to rewrite the Jedi’s traditions as something to be cast off to embrace the new. Disney’s new “Snow White” will not feature dwarves, and she will not be looking for love or a prince to save her. “Wicked” and “Maleficent” rewrote “The Wizard of Oz” and "Sleeping Beauty,” respectively, in order to make original villains the new heroes.

Likewise “Exorcist: Believer” rewrites the exorcism ritual to represent all faiths — or really no faith at all (the word “placebo” is used as a metaphor with a straight face) and to make the devil stronger than any faith. Chris McNeal, the mom from the first “The Exorcist” film explains to the protagonist dad in this new version that she spent the last few decades researching exorcism and found that every culture has one. In other words, she’s saying that’s really what important about combating evil is that this is where people are gathered.

“Yes we all gather to affirm our faith in God, but we also gather to affirm our faith in each other,” she says.

It’s that human connection that they have that is the true power and it’s that power, in the end, that is the only thing that even comes close to being able to bring father and daughter back together. 

This was definitely a flaw in the original “Exorcist” as well. In the end of that story, the rituals were unable to defeat the demon, so it took one of the priests offering himself to the demon and committing suicide to finally win. And yet, it’s the only part of the movie like that. The strongest message one comes away with is in the reality of the demonic and our need for God. In fact, that message was so powerful that one of my best friends’ dad became a Christian after watching that movie.

There are several problems with this secular humanist re-imagining of “The Exorcist.” First, it’s a deeply arrogant flattening of religious and cultural tradition by attempting to conflate different faiths and their views of demons (which are very different, as laid out in “The Exorcist Believer '' episode of Film Theory). Even worse, this view is trying to destroy faith and replace it with something else. For the Christian, faith is about admitting you cannot save yourself — even with the help of your friends — and receiving God's freely given salvation by submitting to his authority. The new faith this movie is trying to replace is one where community is the point of religion, not a connection with God.

There are definitely adherents to this idea today. Ryan Burge, a brilliant sociologist, argued on The Spectator podcast that we need to bring people back to church on the basis of finding community because they’re never going to go back to believing. The most important thing about religion is the community bonds it builds. Because true faith is “outdated” in the view of many, we need to re-imagine faith as being about community rather than God. 

But as the show’s host pointed out to them, that idea has been tried and failed. The denominations of Christianity in the U.K. and U.S. — whether The Church of England or Mainline Protestantism in America — that have most embraced “community first” Christianity are the ones which have lost the most members the fastest. Instead, as Burge says in the book “The Great Dechurching,” the Christianity that is growing is closer to the hyper-spiritual conservative Pentecostal denominations like those portrayed in this year’s documentary “Come Out In Jesus Name.”

CS Lewis once said: “That which is not eternal is eternally out of date.” Indeed, the power of the original “The Exorcist” film was that it helped restore people to faith in an authentic way that existed before them and would exist long after they’re gone. Instead, “The Exorcist: Believer” tries to rewrite faith to fit modern sensibilities. In the end, it only makes itself a hollow thing that will be forgotten sooner rather than later.

“The Exorcist: Believer” is in theaters now.

Joseph Holmes is an award-nominated filmmaker and culture critic living in New York City. He is co-host of the podcast “The Overthinkers” and its companion website theoverthinkersjournal.world, where he discusses art, culture and faith with his fellow overthinkers. His other work and contact info can be found at his website josephholmesstudios.com.