and then I saw her face

The latest sequel in the long-running Exorcist franchise, this film is a mess. I saw the original Exorcist when I was like 14 and couldn’t sleep afterwards, and have seen none of the other movies or the tv show. Luckily you don’t really need to have seen anything else!

Two girls, Angela and Katherine, pull the “tell your parents you’re at someone else’s house” stunt so they can go conduct a ritual in the woods to try to contact Angela’s mom who died before she was born (it was a “we can only save one of them” situation). They don’t come home.

Three days later, a farmer finds them huddled in a barn. They think they’ve only been gone a few hours, with absolutely no idea it’s been three days. According to them, the ritual didn’t work and they started walking home, but got lost and so just kept walking. Their feet are scratched up and seem to have burns – neither have on shoes – which is weird. At the hospital, Angela gets weirdly angry at a baby crying.

Katherine starts acting up in church in a super spooky way, and EVENTUALLY someone figures out that the two girls seem to be possessed. Angela’s dad has been an atheist since his wife – Angela’s mom – died so he doesn’t really believe it at first, but is still compelled by the memoir and the testimony given by a woman whose daughter Regan went through something similar in the 70s.

So Angela’s dad heads over to Regan’s mom’s house. She explains that since she wrote the book, Regan changed her name and went no contact with her. She also says she wasn’t allowed to watch the exorcism because of “the patriarchy” which is mind-numbingly ridiculous. They didn’t let you watch the exorcism because you aren’t an exorcist, lady!

So yeah, Regan’s mom tries to handle a demon all by herself after that and the demon taunts her by saying Regan is dead and then also gouges out her eyes. Must be the patriarchy again.

Uh anyway Angela’s dad and Katherine’s parents decide to exorcise the girls themselves, sort of. Angela’s dad’s… friend? somehow knows a hoodoo priestess who does the bulk of the work, because the Church wouldn’t give the Catholic priest permission to do the exorcism – which is actually how it works. I think a lot of Catholic priests don’t believe people can even be possessed by demons period, which would make exorcisms pointless. And exorcisms have resulted in the deaths of many people, usually from dehydration issues. So they’re a little choosy about what cases actually get permission for an exorcism.

The priest decides to defy the church anyway and gets killed immediately. The demon tells everyone that they can only save one girl, and to choose. I don’t know why these people are SO STUPID that they believed the demon was being 100% honest no tricks there, because yeah it turns out when the dad is like ‘I choose Katherine!’ the demon is like “haha sucker I didn’t say the one you choose would live” so Katherine gets killed and trapped in hell for all eternity, and the happy ending of the movie just seems to want us to ignore that happened.

Yay.

Also Regan is alive and goes to see her mom, who of course cannot see her back because she has no eyes.

The end.

What a mess! This movie wasn’t scary, the only part that startled me was the dogs fighting immediately after the like 2 minutes of silent production logos at the beginning. The trailer was way scarier than the movie.

Regan’s mom was utterly pointless in this movie. She was just like “I’ve studied all types of exorcisms and the important thing is for people to believe” and then she gets blinded. There was no reason for her to be here.

We know that Angela is a vegetarian or vegan, but we don’t get any obvious scenes of her just ripping into meat or something. And even though the girls are found on a farm, there’s no thing with the animals being afraid of them. They’re all just there.

The biggest missed opportunity? In the first movie, The Exorcist, the demon in question is Pazuzu. Although it’s not outright named, the demon in this film is Lamashtu. Lamashtu is known for going after women who are in childbirth, women who are breastfeeding, and children. Now we’re going to just ignore why a demon with those specific preferences would go after 13 year olds, because the interesting part is in order to protect these vulnerable people from Lamashtu, folks would invoke… PAZUZU. That’s right, the demon from the first film and the demon from this film are actually enemies. And they did literally nothing with this information. Now, there are two sequels to this movie planned, so it’s possible this info might come into play later, but we’ll just have to wait and see.

All in all this movie was just not it. It was well put-together, and I have zero complaints about the acting performances (not even from the two girls! We’re really in a golden age of teenage horror movie actresses), but it’s like it needed a good shove. It wasn’t scary enough, the demon parts weren’t demony enough, the atheism wasn’t atheist enough, him coming around to believe wasn’t… believe-y enough. I think this movie could’ve worked well as a miniseries. With more runtime that would’ve given some of the creepier parts room to breathe creepily, and would’ve given it more of a punch for the dad to believe.

It’s just like, nothing in this movie struck me as particularly good, or bad. Solidly average.

Random note: Katherine has two younger siblings. They are not invited to the exorcism. So I kept wondering what the parents told the babysitter? Normally you’d be like “we’re going to be at X restaurant and should be home around 11”, what do you tell the babysitter when you’re going out to do an exorcism?

Also I completely left out the part where the neighbor who’s also a nurse helps convince the dad there’s something up, because Angela knew the neighbor had an abortion and what name she was going to use when she (the neighbor) became a nun even though she never told anyone either piece of information. The actress, Ann Dowd, played a nun in something else so I just thought that was funny.

Sorry for the glut recently. I have to be in the mood for horror, and I’ve mostly been watching Law & Order SVU which certainly has horrifying crimes in it but is not horror.