Warning: Spoilers ahead!
The Exorcist–a beloved horror movie that concludes perfectly leaving no loose ends and leading the viewer to feel satisfied– is the exact polar opposite response this new film gives me after sitting through that abomination of a film. The director behind this film David Gordon Green, shines in all of his incompetence in this movie more than any other that I’ve seen. It pains me to say it, knowing he actually has some talent but decides to put his time into this. In his 2018 sequel to Halloween, he proved to show some care in what he did ignoring the fact that it’s a sequel to a preexisting franchise. All the charm in this movie is lost with this new sequel and here’s why.
The movie follows two girls and two families attempting any means necessary to save both their kids from a demon that’s decided to possess both of them at the same time. It is a pretty straightforward plot until you really start to think about it. The actual reason as to why these two girls got possessed remained unclear, to say the least. The two walk into the woods to communicate with the one girl’s dead mother in some abandoned sewer system using the dead mom’s necklace. No other steps are required; the girls just hold out the necklace and start communicating with the “mom.” This immediately results in them getting possessed somehow by some super demon, if it were that easy then I’m led to believe that there’d be a lot more people getting possessed.
I feel like the rules of this world aren’t fully fleshed out and they aren’t for the rest of the movie. A bit of fan service is also introduced later in the movie with the mom from the first movie, Chris MacNeil, is brought in to save the little girls but ends up getting her eyes poked out by them and is gone for the rest of the movie. It leaves me asking: what was the point? The movie’s scares weren’t awful, but at the same time, they were far from effective. While watching it, there were really only two effective scares that were well executed out of a whole bunch that were extremely predictable. The ending was rather confusing; it left me with more questions than answers as to why any of this had to happen or what was the moral of this mess of a story. My conclusion is that this film should have never seen the light of day and this is how you don’t execute a sequel.
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featured image credit: The Exorcist: Believer Movie Poster. Credit: Jake Craypo ‘27