A couple years ago, legendary director Martin Scorsese made a controversial statement about comic book franchise movies not being true cinema. When pressed to elaborate, he would clarify that statement by saying something to the effect that those kinds of movies felt more like theme park rides rather than genuine cinematic storytelling. Granted, I'm not giving an exact quote here, but I think that's the gist of what Scorsese said.
However, if you think about it, the so-called "theme park principle" has been with us since the dawn of cinema itself. The movies have
always been about entertainment and spectacle. They're capable of being so much more than that, of course. And when it
does become more, we perhaps unreasonably measure everything else according to some yardstick of "Great Art." Granted, I certainly
believe in the idea of Art, but I also am reasonable and pragmatic enough to accept that Great Art is often the exception to the rule. The movie lover needs to temper his or her expectations. The legendary critic Pauline Kael once said,
"Movies are so rarely great art that if we cannot appreciate great trash we have very little reason to be interested in them."
And if there's one aspect of movie-making in which it truly pays to temper one's expectations, it's definitely sequels!
In the realm of the printed word, whenever a writer or novelist creates a sequel or follow-up to one of his or her previous stories, we don't necessarily expect the writer to go out of his or her way to remind us that we are in the same world as the one we had enjoyed in the previous story. Once we get absorbed in the world the author creates, and we get a feel for that author's individual prose style, we accept the fact that we are indeed in the same territory. We are dealing with characters that we've come to know and love in the past, because the author has given them very distinctive identities. And we accept that this is a legitimate continuation of a continuing story of a particular group of characters, or yet another scenario spun out in the same fictional world.
Cinematic sequels, on the other hand, would appear to have an additional burden to contend with. To put it simply, when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote his continuing adventures of Sherlock Holmes, he probably didn't have to worry about callbacks or fan service!
To show what I mean by that, let me explain: I remember when I was a kid, in 1986, I saw the ads for David Cronenberg's
The Fly on TV. And the thing I remember most from that TV ad was Brundlefly smashing through the plate glass window of the doctor's office. I mean, even
before seeing the actual movie itself (not for a few more years), that moment got permanently imprinted on my psyche. Over two years later, audiences saw Chris Walas' sequel,
The Fly II, and what did we see in the film's climax? Brundlefly Jr. smashing through a plate glass window and landing in the Bartok Industries science laboratory! This is an example of a callback, or a piece of fan service. And this is where the "theme park principle" comes back into play. The makers of the sequel are trying to replicate the "ride" based on what audiences had most strongly responded to in the previous film. And in the case of
The Fly II, that's only one example. And
The Fly II itself is yet
one example of a cinematic sequel geared towards revisiting the triumphs of its predecessor. Does this make for a
good film or a
bad film? Well, that's kind of the wrong question. But it does demonstrate the sorts of limitations that the maker of a cinematic sequel is up against when creating a follow-up to a well-loved story. I guess it's worth asking whether these limitations are inherent in the medium of cinema itself as opposed to the printed word, or whether these are in fact artificial limitations imposed by studio concerns.
Tellingly enough, my favorite sequel - nay, my actual favorite
film! - of all time is John Boorman's
Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977). The fact of the matter is, it
is an abject failure in terms of functioning as a sequel in the "theme park ride" sense. For years, it has been derided as the worst cinematic sequel of all time, in spite of the fact that there has been a plethora of lousy and opportunistic follow-ups and cash-ins to all manner of films since then. To this day, and quite unaccountably,
The Heretic remains one of cinema's All-Time Great Unforgivens. But in my humble opinion, its "failure" as a sequel is its artistic triumph and its ultimate salvation. The fact of the matter is, John Boorman was offered the job of directing the original
The Exorcist (1973) before the job ultimately went to William Friedkin, and Boorman turned it down. He did so because he had young daughters who were the same age as the character of Regan MacNeil, and he found the horrific depiction of the phenomenon of possession to be extremely distasteful. But when he was given the opportunity to direct
The Heretic, he was very much intrigued by William Goodhart's screenplay and saw the film as an
opportunity. First of all, he somewhat presumptuously felt that he could "repair the damage" created by the original
Exorcist, and that he'd have a ready-made audience who would be onboard right from the start, who would be familiar with the characters and the situation and would be prepared to leap into whatever great unknown Boorman would lead them.
Wrong!! What audiences actually wanted (or
thought they wanted) was for a spectacle even more horrific and shocking than that of the original
Exorcist! In Boorman's words, he had created the equivalent of a huge Roman arena, and he had neglected to throw any Christians to the lions. When Boorman discussed the prospect of directing a sequel to
The Exorcist with his friend Stanley Kubrick, Kubrick warned him that the only way he could possibly pull it off was by having Regan vomiting in rainbow colors!
For a man who often had the unfair reputation for being an out-of-touch recluse, Kubrick definitely had a good grasp on certain uncomfortable realities about his chosen profession...
Anyway, the damage was done. Any future follow-up or sequel to
The Exorcist would have to contend with - and get out from under - the shadow of
The Heretic's (perceived) failure. And the films that followed, William Peter Blatty's
The Exorcist III (1990) and Paul Schrader's
Dominion (2004), would have to put up with a lot of corporate interference and second-guessing, as the heads of Morgan Creek Studios desperately attempted to resurrect the "ride" of William Friedkin's 1973 classic. To that end, they would order Blatty to film a climactic exorcism scene with Nicol Williamson for
The Exorcist III (whereas there
hadn't been an exorcism in his original source novel
Legion) and Paul Schrader's original prequel would be scrapped entirely to make way for the over-the-top pandering of Renny Harlin's
Exorcist: The Beginning. (Granted, there are a few things that I like about Harlin's film, but I ultimately prefer Schrader's by a
very wide margin!)
Which brings us - in my usual roundabout fashion - to David Gordon Green and the present day!
I saw
The Exorcist: Believer last Friday evening at 6:30 PM at my local theater - and on the UltraScreen, no less! When I went to see it, I decided I would temper my expectations and keep an open mind. I was hoping that David Gordon Green would at the very least make a
decent film about yet other possession case 50 years later. I knew that Ellen Burstyn was in it, and even though I'd heard that her reprising the role of Chris MacNeil was motivated primarily by her desire to raise money for a pet project of hers, I hoped that her mere presence would lend the film a little class.
You know something? I thought that
The Exorcist: Believer was actually rather good.
Granted, let's not lose our minds here! It isn't anywhere
near as great as Friedkin's original
The Exorcist, and I feel that almost all the other sequels and prequels are superior to it... with the exception of Harlin's
Exorcist: The Beginning from 2004. Yes, that's right! I felt like the film had
one job, and that was to be better than the prequel remake! That's not a very big hurdle to jump, and I felt that Green's film had cleared it rather easily!
Believer doesn't really go out of its way to take any major chances, and the plot developments
are somewhat predictable. And just to let audiences know we're keeping on the safe side, the credits actually replicate the font of the original film's. Whenever the name of a particular location is given onscreen, such as "Haiti" or "Georgia," the words are in the same white font that was used in the original for the names of "Iraq" and "Georgetown." And of course, the end titles of the film are in
red!
So what happens is this:
Photographer Victor Fielding (a very effective Leslie Odom Jr.) has a daughter named Angela (Lidya Jewett). Thirteen years before, Victor's pregnant wife had perished in an earthquake during a visit to Haiti. She didn't survive, but her child did. After his wife's death, Victor lost his faith in God. Anyway, Angela and her best friend from school Katherine (Olivia Marcum) go into the woods to perform a ritual ceremony to conjure up Angela's mother. However, the two of them disappear and are declared missing. They turn up three days later in a barn some thirty miles or so away. The parents are relieved to find their children in one piece and
apparently unharmed. However, the two girls gradually show signs of an apparent mental illness, at first minor... and then quite horrifyingly
major. If you've seen your share of films about exorcism and possession, you - and most audience members - will quickly figure out what's really going on!
First of all, the acting is solid all down the line. Leslie Odom Jr. turns in an effective performance as the father, and Jewett and Marcum are very good as the afflicted girls. Ann Dowd is also good in the role of Ann, a hospital nurse who had previously trained to be a nun and had ultimately broken her vows and gotten pregnant. She delivers a wonderful speech at the end which I feel quite effectively sums up the struggle we all have to maintain our sense of hope and optimism in the face of life's horrors. Even if you're not necessarily a believer in God or in organized religion, what she says truly does resonates - at least for me. And I would be remiss if I did not again mention the presence of Ellen Burstyn reprising the role of Chris MacNeil. At the risk of sounding very repetitive, she also turns in a very good performance as well. As the character that audiences and fans of the original film will be most familiar with, she is in effect our surrogate. She responds with sympathetic horror, reliving the trauma of her own daughter Regan's possession, and
her feelings are ultimately
ours. And not to give spoilers or anything, but something truly terrible happens to Chris in the movie which I did not see coming and which genuinely shocked me. And at the very end of the film, we get a cameo from another important character from Blatty's original story. No prizes for guessing who it is, but once again...
No spoilers! 
I also like the fact that, while in the original
Exorcist, Regan's possession was kept secret from the outside world and not involving anyone other than the exorcising priests, the attempt to liberate Angela and Katherine from the demon's grip is a
communal effort, involving friends and family members and the local pastor. (The
Star Trek fan in me was extremely gratified to see the pastor being portrayed by Raphael Sbarge, the traitorous Michael Jonas on
Voyager!) And I also liked the idea that the two girls' heartbeats would be "in sync" during the possession. The very notion of synchronization is quite possibly a callback to
The Heretic, and it was gratifying to see it used as a plot element.
To sum up, I guess you could say that
The Exorcist: Believer is ultimately an
effective sequel. Unfortunately, as I have pointed out in my comments above, being an "effective" cinematic sequel primarily consists in the ability to more or less replicate the "theme park ride" and to replay all the major beats from the original film. So the film is basically operating within a certain set of self-imposed limitations. There is absolutely nothing disgracefully awful about this film, but the film ultimately limits itself to doing what was expected of it, aside from a certain amount of variation which I've already gone into. And therein lies the ultimate "double-bind" of movie sequels:
1) We want to relive the experience - or the "theme park ride" - of the original film, but
2) We're ultimately disappointed when it's unable or unwilling to risk being anything more. It's the ultimate case of
not being able to go home again.
But maybe that's being overly pessimistic of me. While
Believer is not as good a sequel to
The Exorcist as Mike Flanagan's
Doctor Sleep is to Kubrick's original
The Shining (and I personally feel that
Doctor Sleep is the Gold Standard as far as long-delayed follow-ups to classic horror films go), I think its inevitable callbacks and fan service elements are integrated in a reasonably satisfying way that avoids being
overly obvious, even if one
can spot them with a little effort. Also, this is only the first in a trilogy, right? Maybe
Believer is the one film that's meant to perform the
Star Wars: The Force Awakens task of getting long-time fans "back in the saddle," and hopefully the two later films will take more interesting chances. I mean, we can always hope, right? (Apparently the second one is to be called
Deceiver. And for the finale, how about...
Redeemer? Just a thought...)
Anyway, great or not, you know that I'm definitely going to get
The Exorcist: Believer when it comes out on 4K and Blu-ray. I mean, I've got to keep my collection complete, right?
P.S. I watched all the other
Exorcist movies in a marathon viewing this past weekend. I kept to a chronological order, in terms of onscreen events:
1)
Dominion: Prequel to The Exorcist (Paul Schrader / 2004)
2)
The Exorcist (William Friedkin / 1973)
3)
The Ninth Configuration (William Peter Blatty / 1980)
4)
Exorcist II: The Heretic (John Boorman / 1977)
5)
The Exorcist III: Legion (William Peter Blatty / 1990)
(
The Ninth Configuration may not involve the subject of demonic possession or exorcism, but it absolutely takes place in the
Exorcist Universe, for lack of a better way or putting it. Blatty wrote and directed it himself, adapting it from his own novel, and thematically it's very much of a piece with
The Exorcist and
Legion. The lead character is an astronaut named Billy Cutshaw, and he was apparently one of the guests at Chris MacNeil's party in
The Exorcist - played by a different actor, of course.
He's the one whom Regan addresses, saying
"You're gonna die up there" to him just before urinating on the carpet. I guess you could make the argument that Cutshaw's frayed mental state in
The Ninth Configuration is a kind of collateral damage from the events of
The Exorcist.)
P.P.S. I thought that
Dominion and
Legion made for perfect bookends to this sequence. The reason for this is that in the horrific opening scene of
Dominion, the Nazi lieutenant named Kessel forces Father Merrin to single out ten citizens from the Dutch village to be executed. As a frightened Merrin kneels down to pray, Kessel mocks him, saying
"God is not here today!" Toward the very end of
The Exorcist III: Legion, when Lieutenant Kinderman calls out to God, the demon inhabiting Father Karras mocks him, saying
"You grow tiresome, Lieutenant. And foolish. Save your prayers. God is not here with us now. There is only the darkness here. And your death!" But of course, the very opposite is ultimately shown to be the truth. And, whether you're religious or not,
that is the whole point of these stories...
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