Common Sense Media Review
By Jeffrey M. Anderson
,
based on child development research. How do we rate?
Sequel to demon-possession classic has violence, blood.
Parents Need to Know
Why Age 16+?
Any Positive Content?
Where to Watch
Videos and Photos
The Exorcist: Believer
What's the Story?
In THE EXORCIST: BELIEVER, professional photographer Victor Fielding (Leslie Odom Jr.) is in Haiti with his pregnant wife (Tracey Graves). She receives a blessing from some local women for her baby but is then fatally injured in an earthquake. Thirteen years later, back in the States, overprotective Victor and his daughter, Angela (Lidya Jewett), try to make the best of things. Angela asks to spend the afternoon with her friend Katherine (Olivia Marcum), and Victor reluctantly agrees. But rather than doing homework together, the girls head out to the woods to perform a ritual to contact Angela's dead mother. Later, the girls fail to return home and are missing for three days. When they're found, they seem odd. Soon, they're speaking in demon voices, saying secrets that no one on earth could know. It's clear that they're beyond a doctor's help, so Victor arranges for a ceremony that could prove deadly.
Is It Any Good?
As he did with Halloween (2018), director David Gordon Green pays homage to a 1970s classic with just enough new touches to bring it up to date. The Exorcist: Believer may be unnecessary, but it's mostly entertaining. Still, the overarching question sparked by the movie is: Why is it here, other than as a financial gambit based on the success of Green's Halloween movies? It doesn't do much differently than any other demon possession/exorcism movies of the past several decades -- and it doesn't even have an exorcist in it.
But Green seems to have put a lot of care and attention into his movie, offering a revamped version of the creepy "Tubular Bells" theme music and working in a decent homage to director William Friedkin's eerie sound design on the original The Exorcist (1973), a smashing-together of quiet moments and sudden sounds. It's also refreshing to see a movie that opens its arms to various faiths (or even lack of faith). The casting is also first-rate, with Odom Jr. and Ann Dowd providing strong emotional moments, and the great Ellen Burstyn reprising her Oscar-nominated role as Chris MacNeil many decades later. Like all the sequels in this franchise, The Exorcist: Believer falls well short of the original, but it still offers enough atmospheric horror to turn heads.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about The Exorcist: Believer's violence. How did it make you feel? Was it exciting? Shocking? What did the movie show or not show to achieve this effect? Why is that important?
Is the movie scary? What's the appeal of horror movies? Why do people sometimes like to be scared?
How does this movie compare to the other Exorcist films? How does it continue the story? What does it do differently?
Do you agree with the nurse character that the purpose of the devil is to steal away our hope? If so, how can we fight that?
Did you notice positive representations in the film? What about stereotypes?
Movie Details
- In theaters : October 6, 2023
- On DVD or streaming : December 19, 2023
- Cast : Leslie Odom Jr. , Ann Dowd , Jennifer Nettles
- Director : David Gordon Green
- Inclusion Information : Black Movie Actor(s) , Female Movie Actor(s)
- Studio : Universal Pictures
- Genre : Horror
- Topics : Fantasy
- Run time : 111 minutes
- MPAA rating :
- MPAA explanation : some violent content, disturbing images, language and sexual references
- Last updated : September 18, 2025
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