Review: The Exorcist: Believer - Ellen Burstyn returns for schlocky sequel

MA15+, 111 minutes

3 stars

Very different world I grew up in, 1970s Queensland, from the one my kids are growing up in today, in comfortable Canberra.

One night a month, at the surf club my dad worked at in the sleepy coastal town a few beaches south from Noosa, they would pin up a white bed sheet, move the pool tables, drag out somebody's 16mm film projector, and have family movie night.

This being the 1970s and parenting being simultaneously more laid back and more brutal back then, family movie night might have meant watching The Aristocats or Pete's Dragon, but it also included films like The Poseidon Adventure and even, yes, The Exorcist.

Every kid had their eyes glued to that bed sheet screen as Jason Miller's Father Damien Karras throws himself down the stairs, killing himself to purge his body of the demon he has just driven out of the possessed child Regan, played by Linda Blair.

You need not fear for our mental wellbeing, watching such adult content.

Every child who cried was treated to a packet of chips and an orange juice, so that our indoor-smoking parents could keep sinking the beers and enjoying the film, and I did enjoy it, no tears, no chips, no OJ.

So with such fond memories of William Friedkin's genre-spurning 1973 film, and having seen dozens of the more-than-dozens of films it has inspired, I was keen to see what the team at Blumhouse Films were going to do to resurrect the franchise, 50 years later.

Doting dad Vincent Fielding (Leslie Odom Jr) has a terrific relationship with teen daughter Angela (Lidya Jewett) so he isn't at all suspicious when she pulls the old "I'm studying at my friend's house" lie that her pal Katherine (Olivia O'Neill) has pulled on her folks Miranda and Tony (Jennifer Nettles and Norbert Leo Butz). Their girls have gone off to a local field and they're up to no good. I don't mean smoking and drinking, I mean reaching out to the spirit world, attempting to contact Angela's mother who died giving birth to her.

The parents are beside themselves and the police stumped when the girls don't return until three days later, displaying some more traumatic than usual trauma responses to their ordeal. This starts with bed wetting but ends in full-on roof-climbing, blood-vomiting demonic possession.

Fortunately for atheist Vincent, his neighbour (Ann Dowd) is a former nun in touch with Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn), a survivor and demonic possession authority thanks to her daughter Regan's successful exorcism decades earlier. Great to see Burstyn resume this role half a century later, and bring with it her gravitas and warmth, two things you don't necessarily expect in a horror film. Her presence anchors this film to the heft of that brand name, and elevates a film that is otherwise comme ci, comme ca.

The screenplay, penned by director David Gordon Green with Scott Teems and Peter Sattler, takes quite some time to transition to the horror film we're expecting, opening as a teen drama cum psychological thriller, and even in the film's later religious ritual smorgasbord only rewards us with one decent scare (but a good one, must admit I jumped).

There's a pair of great performances from Jewett and O'Neill once the girls are fully possessed, and some fun make-up work.

Friedkin's 1973 film was drenched in Catholic guilt and Catholic ritual and it's an interesting approach David Gordon Green and team take in throwing a multi-denominational posse at the demon possessing the girls. It's a bit too inclusive for my liking, and I suppose we'll only know if this modern approach to exorcism works if these characters never return in a sequel.