Quartile rating: 5.5/10 · 1 rating
Since his wife's death, Victor has raised his daughter Angela alone. After she and her friend return from a three-day disappearance with missing memories, they begin displaying frightening behavior reminiscent of the MacNeil possession fifty years prior.
The Exorcist: Believer is widely considered a disappointing legacy sequel that fails to justify its existence. The plot recycles beats from the original without the psychological depth or dread, doubling the possession to two girls but diluting rather than amplifying tension. The acting is serviceable but unremarkable, with even Ellen Burstyn's returning presence feeling wasted in a brief, shoehorned cameo. Cinematography is competent but generic modern horror — flat lighting, jump-scare staging — lacking the iconography of Friedkin's original. Novelty is extremely low: it is a formulaic, derivative reboot that adds almost nothing new to the possession subgenre or the franchise mythology. The ending is broadly criticized as its weakest element — an abrupt, tonally confused conclusion that squanders its central emotional stakes with a forced, unsatisfying resolution that left audiences and critics frustrated.