The Exorcist: Believer (2023)

The Exorcist: Believer earns its keep by treating possession less like a carnival ride and more like a slow, suffocating collapse of certainty—starting as an eerie missing-kids mystery and tightening into full-blown dread. David Gordon Green leans hard into atmosphere and unsettling makeup effects, but the real hook is how grounded it feels through Leslie Odom Jr., who plays a father’s fear and stubborn love with a conviction that makes the supernatural hit harder. The film’s vibe is grim, urgent, and often genuinely unnerving, with two young performances that hold your attention even when the imagery turns vicious. If you want the operatic shock of the 1973 classic, this may not replace it, but if you’re in the mood for a modern, relentless thriller that builds tension patiently before it bites, it’s an easy recommend.

The Exorcist: Believer clearly wants to modernize a classic by mixing grief, faith, and a “two kids, one evil” setup into a big, crowd-pleasing possession thriller. The problem is it leans hard on familiar franchise callbacks and possession-movie beats, so instead of feeling like a bold new chapter it often plays like a checklist with a louder second half rather than a scarier one. Even with a committed lead performance and a few gnarly, well-mounted moments, the tension tends to flatten out into noise, and the legacy connection feels more like a tease than a payoff. If you’re hoping for the dread, originality, and psychological unease of the original, you may leave irritated; if you just want a brisk, polished studio exorcism movie with intense imagery, it’ll do the job.