David Gordon Green directs Leslie Odom Jr., Ann Dowd and Ellen Burstyn in this legacy horror sequel to the Seventies demonic possession phenomenon.

The career of David Gordon Green initially seems baffling. He started out as an independent Terrence Malick acolyte. Then he took studio cash and directed some slick bro comedies. And, a few diversions along the way accepted, now seems happy resurrecting tired 1970s horror brands with attempts at bringing back the original cast and tone. He is less an auteur than a serious pastiche artist. His recreations of Malick, Carpenter and now Friedkin are obvious to spot but he’s also had a fair crack at replicating the visual dialect of Michael Ritchie, Hal Ashby and Martin Brest over his varied career as a forger. In the first half of Exorcist: Believer he does a pretty convincing job of cloning Friedkin. We get an intense global trauma introduction and an increasingly frantic procedural when the soon-to-be-possessed kids go missing. DGG knows how to turn the same crank as Bill Friedkin, he just doesn’t understand the mechanics of how this carnival ride works. The original created hysteria from a true sense of hopelessness… and from a matter of fact world being torn apart… and the lost constant that just about everyone watching them had a shared belief system that was warped into grotesque terror. Here the scares and the existential assault just never arrive. There is some stuff to be read into the three times various characters have to make difficult choices about a child’s life… there is something about abortion here that needs to be unpacked. Yet on the whole it is a flick of false saviours (a cameo for cash Burstyn, a red herring rookie priest who clearly can’t hold a candle to Karras or Merrin) and soft get outs. Are you telling me a single father whose teen daughter goes through all that in the public eye wouldn’t have social services down on him like a ton of bricks by day three… or even after? Unbelievable.

5

Perfect Double Bill: The Pope’s Exorcist (2023)

I write regular features about live comedy for British Comedy Guide here https://www.comedy.co.uk/people/bobby_carroll/features/