When The Exorcist was released in 1973, it was considered the scariest studio movie since Psycho, with audience members actually fainting during intense scenes. Nowadays, it’s more of a relic than an experience, which means its importance lies in what it lead to—a successful if sometimes derided franchise of its own, not to mention a slew of copycat films that spice up Catholic mumbo-jumbo with disgusting behavior and jump cuts. David Gordon Green’s reboot is obviously timed to take advantage of the 50th anniversary of the original, and it tries to make do by rehashing the famous set pieces that made people who are old enough to be your grandparents twitch in their seats, as well as by talking Ellen Burstyn and Linda Blair to return to the scene of the horror for gratuitous cameos. 

If two rotating heads are better than one, then it makes sense to have a pair of possessed little girls at the center of the mayhem. Before they are inhabited by the same demon that possessed Regan in the first Exorcist, we learn that one of them, Angela (Lidya Jewett), has lost her mother, who died on vacation in Haiti while giving birth to her. More to the point, her father (Leslie Odom Jr.) was given an impossible choice by the hospital: Your daughter can live, or your wife can live, but not both. Consequently, Angela grows up in an abject state of guilt, and upon hearing of a special seance ritual, she talks her best friend Katherine (Olivia Marcum) into joining her so that she can talk to her mother. This sojourn, which takes place in the woods, leaves them injured and acting strange. As they deteriorate mentally and physically in parallel, their loved ones go the usual medical route and, after things get progressively worse, turn to the spiritual. The only really compelling aspect of this part of the plot is that Katherine’s parents are serious Catholics who are convinced their daughter has been possessed, while Angela’s father is more empirical; though, in the end, he can’t help but give in to the argument that the problem can’t be scientifically addressed. What’s weird about this dynamic—which might have been interesting had it been allowed to develop to its natural end—is that the Catholic Church, so central to any movie about exorcism, doesn’t exert much of a presence here. Even Katherine’s family comes across as more like millennial evangelicals. Basically, Green’s approach is ecumenical, a collection of people from different faiths all seeing past their differences to help the two girls, including Aunt Lydia herself, Ann Dowd, as a nurse with some knowledge of possession who actually convinces Angela’s father to go with the exorcism plan. The whole purpose of this plot strategy seems to be to pull the rug out from under those whose faith is more or less self-serving.

As a result, the movie ends up being not only logically confounding, but unscary and, at times, inadvertently hilarious. In the last 50 years, advances in special effects and CG, not to mention more sophisticated approaches to supernatural phenomena, have made horror movies more distressing than The Exorcist, but this movie—pardon the expression—can’t hold a candle to the original in that regard. Even the demon is weak meat. 

Opens Dec. 1 in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Nihonbashi (050-6868-5060), Toho Cinemas Hibiya (050-6868-5068), Shinjuku Wald 9 (03-5369-4955), Toho Cinemas Shinjuku (050-6868-5063), Toho Cinemas Shibuya (050-6868-5002), Toho Cinemas Roppongi Hills (050-6868-5024).

The Exorcist: Believer home page in Japanese

photo (c) Universal Studios