THE EXORCIST: BELIEVER Director on the Future of His Trilogy as Movie Is Met with Bad Reviews
The Exorcist: Believer is not a good movie. I went and saw it over the weekend and was so disappointed with how the movie turned out. I was actually surprised by how bad the movie ended up being. I mean, if you’re going to attempt to revive The Exorcist, you better make damn well sure that it’s going to at least reach the bar that the original William Friedkin-directed 1973 film set, but this movie fell far below it. In fact, I think that The Exorcist II and III were actually better films than this one. The movie is getting poor reviews from a lot of people.
The film was directed by Halloween director David Gordon Green, and he has planned out an entire trilogy for the film, which the studio is going to have to stick with because they paid $400 million for the rights to the franchise.
During a recent interview with THR, Green spoke about his plans for the trilogy, which he surprisingly doesn’t really even have a plan for!? He calls himself “the least rigid filmmaker in town.” He then went on to explain that it begins with having confidence, “and then it’s about intuition, improvisation, opportunity, and these things that come to light. So I have a roadmap of what I’d like to do with this trilogy and some themes I’d like to tackle and some philosophies I’d like to explore.”
He went on to explain: “I haven’t really processed the experience behind this creation and I don’t think I will until the movie has been released. So then I’ll process it, take a deep breath and see how much of my original instincts and ideas apply to where we could go with this. And then I’ll take it from there. But I am far from rigid. I like to keep things loose. I’m always evolving with my creative collaborators, particularly my actors and actresses in front of the camera and bringing their ideas and authenticity to the stage I’m trying to create.”
When asked if he planned on directing the next two sequels, he said: “I think hope is … My intention is just to start making things, and as those plans come together, if I find myself in that [The Exorcist: Deceiver] director’s chair, I’d be thrilled. But right now, I’m navigating it from a story perspective and looking at my realities of life as I pivot.”
I was actually looking forward to this because I’m a fan of the franchise, but after watching this first movie, I have no real desire to see how the other two films play out. It’s crazy, for me, this movie was boring! Everything about it was monotone, flat, and uninteresting. It’s a shame, and I was bummed out that the movie was as bad as it was.
What did you all think of the film? You know how I feel! Did any of you like it? Was there something I missed?