The Exorcist: Believer

Everyone should know by now Satan never sleeps. That means you can always have one more demonic horror sequel. In this case, we are talking about a franchise built by one of the greatest horror films of all-time and a criminally under-appreciated third installment. The rest are not so fondly remembered (especially #2), so Halloween 2018 rebooter David Gordon Green largely disregards them in the Blumhouse-produced The Exorcist: Believer, which opens tomorrow nationwide.

Thirteen years ago, Victor Fielding and his mega-pregnant wife Sorenne were vacationing in Haiti when the 2010 Sean Penn earthquake hit. She was killed, but doctors managed to save their unborn daughter, Angela. Of course, Fielding still has lingering pain and trauma you-know-who is sure to exploit when he gets a chance.

As a young teen, Angela is increasingly preoccupied with thoughts of the mother she never knew. So much so, she and her friend Katherine try to raise her spirit through a ritual in the forest, which is an exceptionally bad idea. Three days later, Fielding and Katherine’s Evangelical parents finally find them, but they are different. At first, everyone assumes they are just in shock, but their behavior grows nasty, violent, and just plain evil.

Fielding is not a believer, but his neighbor, a former nun, certainly is. When she gives him Chris MacNeill’s book about her daughter Reagan’s demonic possession, Fielding is so struck by the similarities, he seeks out her advice.

You have to wonder what William Peter Blatty (who wrote the original Exorcist novel and screenplay) would think of the way Believer depicts the Catholic Church. Rather insultingly for fans, Blatty’s name never appears in the opening credits, but this film would not exist without him. However, he might begrudgingly admit there is some veracity to its feckless depiction of the Catholic Church, in the Francis era. How can a Church that makes deals with the CCP find the faith to fight demons from Hell? At least, Ann the former nun will try, along with several other clergy, including Katherine’s Evangelical pastor. Ironically, he is portrayed in largely sympathetic terms, as Victor’s neighbor, Stuart, a Pentecostal lay leader, is as well.

Green and co-screenwriters Peter Sattler, Scott Teems, and Danny McBride make a point to emphasize faith, rather than the faith, but evil is still rotten and corrupting to the core. Frankly the “village” trying to conduct the exorcism needs a Father Karras and a Father Merrin—and they would be the first ones to admit it.

The heralding return of Ellen Burstyn as MacNeil is real a coup for Green. Even though she only has fifteen or twenty minutes of screen time, her presence has authority and the apostolic connection to the 1973 film lends Believer massive additional credibility. Despite the limited time, Burstyn is quite poignant and her post-Pazuzu life is well-written and believable.

Speed of Life: A Time Travel Ode to Bowie

He wrote “Space Oddity” and starred in The Man Who Fell to Earth. David Bowie brought science fiction into rock & roll better than anyone, so he probably would have been amused by the fanciful notion his death could so unbalance the universe, it tears a wormhole into the space-time continuum. That is exactly what happens in director-screenwriter Liz Manashil’s Speed of Life, which releases today on VOD platforms.

January 10, 2016 is a particularly fateful day for June Hoffman. First, her favorite recording artist, David Bowie, passes on to the great glitter club in the sky. Next, her boyfriend Edward Karp is ripped through the wormhole caused by his passing. Rather awkwardly, they were having a “we need to have a talk” sort of argument when he disappeared. For the next three decades, she lives in a state of limbo hoping he will re-materialize, as indeed he does, just when she is due to move into a dystopian state-mandated retirement home on her 60^th birthday.

Karp has not aged a second, but society is now a watered-down version of Logan’s Run, requiring communal early bird dinners at sixty, rather than death at thirty. She had intended to run away with her torch-carrying friend Samuel, but Karp’s arrival complicates everything.

Speed of Life is a heartfelt film that features several nicely turned performances, so there is definitely stuff there to like. With that stipulation, it must be noted Manashil does not have a strong grasp on the mechanics of time-travel narratives. Ultimately, she sort of tries to have her temporal cake and eat it too, resulting in an ending that makes no sense whatsoever. She also seems to be uncomfortable handling dystopian themes, because the nearly sixty-year old Hoffman appears to live in a bizarrely sunny and laidback Brave New World. Frankly, it is never clear just how much urgency there is to the countdown to 60. On top of all that, the brief 75-minute feature feels conspicuously padded with a subplot involving Samuel’s daughter Laura and her new neighbor Phillip, which never pays off to any meaningful degree.