The Exorcist: Believer (2023)

I don't want to seem too dramatic, but David Gordon Green has become a monster who must be stopped. I had worries about The Exorcist: Believer as soon as I saw the trailer (which basically sold the film as "if you thought it was scary to watch a young girl be possessed and endangered then wait until you see our film with TWO young girls being possessed and endangered). Those worries grew and grew as I watched what is now a new low point in a horror franchise that contains Exorcist II: The Heretic.

Here's as much of a plot summary as I can be bothered to give. Victor Fielding (Leslie Odom Jr.) is a widow, and a father to teenaged Angela (Lidya Jewett). Angela heads off into some woods with a friend, Katherine (Olivia O'Neill), and the two girls end up missing for three days. Once they're back home, Angela and Katherine start acting rather strangely. Victor is unable to explain the change in his daughter, as are Miranda and Tony (Katherine's parents, played by Jennifer Nettles and Norbert Leo Butz, respectively). It's not long until we have Ellen Burstyn being pushed onscreen, bringing her character of Chris MacNeil into a tawdry mess that doesn't deserve the sense of legitimacy that her involvement gives it.

I am not exaggerating when I say that there is almost nothing here that will impress horror fans. In fact, most of the script, in terms of both dialogue (don’t get me started on that line about the patriarchy) and plotting, is laughably bad, and the material isn’t helped by visuals that are ugly and underlit. One moment focuses on a battle between elements that made me feel as if someone had spliced in a cut scene from a Mortal Kombat game. The blame lies with Green, but also co-writer Peter Sattler.

Odom Jr. is the best thing here, and there’s also a solid supporting turn from Ann Dowd, but they are the only people worth mentioning. I don’t blame anyone else for their performances, especially the younger cast members who admirably twist and throw themselves around in the more physical moments, but I wish there had been a cast of characters worth rooting for. There isn’t. This is a brand name in search of a worthy film, and that search may continue for a long time yet.

Considering what he did with another iconic horror property, I am worried that Green has some plan to link things together and ret-con past glories into his new creation. That would not be good. The only way this film is effective is in showing everyone how Green completely misunderstands the original classic.

Almost aggressively dumb and unsubtle throughout, aside from an opening sequence that I admit gave me hope that I might be in for something decent, this is a film made by someone who was told all about The Exorcist, but didn’t actually watch the film. It’s a film that somehow feels both overlong and yet also rushing to get to the lengthy exorcism sequence we all know is coming in the third act. And as for the score, and the “cheeky” music cue interwoven throughout a couple of key scenes . . . sometimes you just have to end a review with something simple and crude to express your opinion, so I say “f**k off”. That goes for so many aspects of the film that the makers thought would be cute and/or clever. And it goes for David Green.

Excuse me, I am setting up a crowdfunding campaign to help me hire a young priest and an old priest to keep Green away from any more classic horror movies.

2/10

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Mubi Monday: Compliance (2012)

A stark lesson about why we should maybe remember that blindly following the lead of someone who seems to be in a position of authority isn’t always a good thing, Compliance is based on a true story that is all the more worrying and disturbing for being all too easy to understand. And, let me make it clear, although I watched the film with a mix of anger and no small amount of self-righteous smugness about how I would do anything I could do avoid being in that situation . . . I know that I would just as easily be manipulated if I was intimidated by anyone with enough information to convince me that they were on official police business.

Dreama Walker plays Becky, the fast food employee who is taken into the office by her boss (Sandra, played by Ann Dowd) when an alleged police officer (Pat Healy) calls with an accusation of theft. The questioning begins, as does the titular compliance, even as the situation starts to get more and more strange and twisted.

Written and directed by Craig Zobel, this is a hell of an experience to sit through. Viewers are told at the very start that everything is depicted truthfully, without exaggeration (it's hard to firmly believe that, but let's give everyone involved the benefit of the doubt), and that somehow makes it all the more frustrating and angering as you watch someone toy with people over a phone line. 

Walker is very good in her role, as vulnerable and confused as anyone would be in her position. Dowd is equally good, harder to sympathise with, especially at times when she gets carried away with the whole process, but also an unwitting victim of the manipulative caller. Healy says a lot of the right things, and the script easily shows just how well this dialogue was planned out, up until a certain point that there is no coming back from. Bill Camp is also worth mentioning, in the role of Van, a man who is shown to resist the easy option of just going along with the whole thing, until he is then seemingly cajoled into action by both the voice on the phone and his partner (Dowd).

Someone once said that you can get in almost anywhere with a hi-vis and a clipboard. You can also get people to do a lot if they fear being arrested. There are many assumptions we make in our daily lives that put us in surprisingly vulnerable positions, and Compliance is a necessary reminder that we should try not to live by those assumptions. Because there will always be someone out there looking to exploit others, for monetary gain, for revenge, or just for their own enjoyment.

8/10

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American Animals (2018)

Based on a bizarre true story, American Animals presents viewers with arguably the most incompetent heist in modern times. The film boasts a couple of excellent lead performances, and is helped by the way in which it intercuts the fictionalised depiction of the planning and execution of the crime with comments from the real people involved.

Evan Peters and Barry Keoghan are, respectively, Warren Lipka and Spencer Reinhard, two young men who come up with a half-assed plan to steal some very valuable books from a university library. They rope in two friends, Eric Borsuk (played by Jared Abrahamson) and Chas Allen (played by Blake Jenner), and rush to put their plan into effect, which is when one thing after another starts to go wrong.

I know that nobody ever believes me when I say no pun intended but, honestly, there's no other way I can think of continuing this review without asserting that American Animals is a strange beast indeed. The comments from Lipka and co. often feel like an opportunity for them to somehow deflect responsibility away from themselves, although the juxtaposition is also used to comedic effect when someone wants to point out that they recollect things differently to the way they are being shown. It's a tightrope, tonally, that is skilfully handled by writer-director Bart Layton (nicely blending the narrative with footage more in line with his documentary background - be sure to check out the similarly murky waters of The Imposter).

Peters and Keoghan both do great work, one being far more confident in his abilities than he should be while the other is a bag of nerves at every step of the way, and Abrahamson and Jenner are good fits in their roles. Both Ann Dowd and Betty Jean Gooch (the person Dowd portrays) deserve a special mention, the main librarian who also became the central human victim of the crime, and her participation on the film helps to serves as another reminder that, despite how farcical it became, this was a crime that had consequences.

It's easy to understand why some might view this as something slightly distasteful, especially during the first half, but I would encourage people to watch it, and stick with it. It eventually peels away the layers of optimism and fake attempts to seem confident and cool, showing that this was nothing more than a group of young adults who took a stupid idea too far. The pain resulting from the crime may have not seemed obvious to them at the time, being far too concerned with making a success of their plan and evading capture, but it soon starts to sink in, both in terms of the one person they traumatised directly and the way they shocked and upset their families.

Part comedy, part crime film, part documentary, all astonishing, American Animals is well worth your time. It doesn't glorify the people involved, but it does allow themselves to try and paint things in a better light before the weight of the reality of the situation pushes them further and further down, forcing contemplation and re-evaluation of how they view(ed) themselves.

8/10

American Animals is available to buy here.
Americans can buy it here.