Review

Culture

Film & TV

Weirdness

31 October 2023

5 min read

When horror is horrifyingly bad

A classic horror film’s sequel deeply disappoints priest Yaroslav Walker, missing opportunities to address psychological and spiritual power.

Yaroslav Walker

Yaroslav is Vicar of Christ Church, Hampstead.

A man and a women stand looking in the same direction with concerned faces.

Ellen Burstyn and Leslie Odom Jr are concerned about the reviews.

Universal Pictures.

That’s it. I have nothing more to say about the film in this review - The Exorcist: Believer. If you want a proper, knowledgeable, definitive derogatory diatribe against this dreadful waste of celluloid, may I suggest you watch this review by Mark Kermode. The good Doctor loves the original Exorcist more than any other reviewer I’m aware of and is the expert witness you need if you want to understand the absolute abomination this ‘film’ is (and, more importantly, is not!). I don’t have the energy. However, I do have the Church’s authority to speak on matters of faith and doctrine, so instead of my usual theology-smuggle at the end of a review, can we just dive right into it?

SPOILERS AHEAD – trust me, it doesn’t matter…

You can’t comment on an exorcism film without reference to the original – The Exorcist. Believer is David Gordon Green making a something of a sequel to the original; this went well with his first Halloween film, and then turned horrifyingly, stupidly bad with the second and third outings (and such treatment is promised for the Exorcist franchise). The Exorcist is a club sandwich of thematic wonder. William Peter Blatty was both a tremendously talented writer and also a thoughtful, intelligent, and committed Roman Catholic. When he wrote the novel of The Exorcist, he created a popular (slightly bloated) theological masterpiece. Adapting the script for William Friedkin to direct, he took the core themes and trimmed all the fat. The result is gorgeously lean, muscular, agile film that moves at a clip and doesn’t allow you a moment to forget the searing questions of faith, and doubt, and family, and failure, and sin.

Believer raises no such questions. If it has any sort of theme or message it seems to be this. The demonic is there not to sow random chaos, horror, pain and destruction (a good understanding of ‘evil’ as ‘nothing’, very much in keeping with a conception of evil formalised in Western theology by St Augustine almost a few millennia ago, which Blatty presents with perfection). It is there to offer people an ironic monkey’s-paw-esque bargain to reveal their own weakness and hypocrisy…yeh? Believer isn’t just terrible film, and not just a terrible sequel to a remarkable film; it is the lazy desecration of a cinematic theological legacy.

The original gave a gorgeous visual commentary on the human spirit remaining resilient in the face of evil as the absolute negation of ‘what is’.

To name the overarching source of my incandescence, it is this question: What is the demonic doing in this film? What is it achieving? The original Exorcist is clear – Fr Merrin (the eponymous exorcist) explains that the possession of a child is intended as random, purely nihilistic, awful chaos that grinds down the resolve of righteous. It has no point, no substance – it is genuine ‘evil’, nothingness collapsing in on itself. In Believer the demon seems to be wanting to make a social commentary on parenting…maybe? At the start of the film the voodoo-blessed mother is caught in a building collapse after a Haitian earthquake, and as she lies dying in a makeshift hospital the father is presented with a terrible choice: the surgeon can only save one or the other, mother or baby. SPOILER – he may have a daughter, but he didn’t choose her. There’s another girl who is something of a free spirit with parents who are very light touch. One father didn’t want his daughter, the other doesn’t seem to be too bothered about his daughter having structure…you know? Parents, children, the sins of the father…you know?

The great climax has the demon(s) presenting the assembled non-exorcists with a choice. Fathers – choose your daughter and she’ll live, first come, first served. One father recognises the immorality, the pointless and annihilating ‘evil’, of letting a girl die, the other doesn’t. He’s been pretty much a non-entity throughout the film, has no real understanding of what is going on, is about as psychologically traumatised as it is possible to be, and is presented with the opportunity to save his daughter…of course he makes the wrong choice…because this is a ‘clever film’…The demon reveals the girl who was chosen will die. TWIST. Didn’t see that coming – admittedly this film is so stupid I didn’t see anything coming. Why? Why let one girl live? Why is this demon – this figure of total and destructive evil – teaching the people a lesson about self-sacrifice and never being willing to sacrifice an innocent? Is the demon making an important point? WHAT IS GOING ON!? Well, the mistakes of Heretic are being repeated, but this is a point for the cognoscenti…

The original gave a gorgeous visual commentary on the human spirit remaining resilient in the face of evil as the absolute negation of ‘what is’; it ends with a broken man finding his faith and his redemption in a Christ-like act of self-sacrifice (Fr Karras – the junior exorcist – takes the demon into himself and commits suicide). There is, in this final act, a moving and absolute statement on the indomitability of creation (and humanity as the pinnacle of creation) as that which God has willed into being and continues to will ‘to be’. We are here! We are loved! We are to be redeemed! We cannot be seduced by the lie that decay and dissolution and destruction and nothingness is our ultimate destiny. Believer has people stumbling by accident to a conclusion that says nothing about God, or the devil, or heaven, or hell, or faith, or doubt, or family, OR GOOD AND EVIL, or anything serious.

I despise this film. I pray to God the other two films in the proposed trilogy do not get made. They probably will…maybe that’s not the end of the world. Maybe the inevitable sequels will, in the very fact of their being filmed and released, be a better exposition of the reality of banal and destructive evil, which seeks to find the beauty of ‘what is’ and tarnish it, than their actual stories. Maybe…

Star rating? At the sight of this film the stars themselves hid…

Review

Culture

Film & TV

Trauma

5 June 2025

5 min read

This bad TV version of The Last of Us ruins much more than storytelling

Following up the acclaimed video game doesn't deliver prestige viewing.

Jonathan Rowlands

Jonathan is a theology lecturer and Liverpool FC fan.

A pensive looking woman glances to the side.

Ellie, played by Bella Ramsey.

HBO.

What’s the point of the TV adaptation of The Last of Us?

Throughout its second series, I’ve been trying to wrap my head around this question. I’m still short of an answer.

Turning the two The Last of Us video games into prestige TV was always going to be problematic, because those video games already were prestige TV. You just had to press buttons on a controller now and then.

The first The Last of Us video game is regularly included in lists of the best video games ever, and it’s not because of any ground-breaking gameplay or because of any technological advancements it made. It’s because of its story.

It is richly character-focussed, gritty, realistic, and utterly human. The Last of Us Part I (as it’s now known) carries the kind of gravitas and emotional complexity you might expect from the likes of The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Chernobyl, or The West Wing. It’s already prestige TV.

So, is the TV adaptation simply an attempt to make this same story accessible to people who don’t play video games? Maybe. That would make sense, were it not for its deeply frustrating second series, the finale of which has just aired.

The Last of Us Part II was massively controversial when it released in 2020. (WARNING: absolutely colossal spoilers ahead, for both the games and the TV show). Joel – the main protagonist of the first game – is abruptly and brutally murdered in its opening act. This leads Ellie – his pseudo-surrogate-daughter – to hunt down those responsible in attempt to enact a reckoning.

In the video game, most of the story is told over the course of three days. First, from Ellie’s perspective, then from the perspective of Abby, Joel’s killer. In the TV show, the second series covers Ellie’s side of the story before very abruptly shifting to Abby’s side in the final seconds, leaving the viewers with a cliffhanger. Even as someone who’s played the game and knows what’s going to happen, it felt like a bit of a slap in the face.

But for someone who hasn’t played the games it must be bordering on nonsensical. Even spread over two series, the story is so truncated, and so much is left unsaid. I can’t imagine making sense of this series without having played the video game first. But the TV show is basically just a live action remake of the game. Which again begs the question: what’s the point of the TV adaptation of The Last of Us?

I’ve found this series, and the video game it’s based off, hugely frustrating. Because it’s trying to convey an important message. But both the game and the show contrive to undermine their important central ideas through poor storytelling techniques and structures.

But in making clear what was left unsaid in the game, the power of the moment is undercut. Much is spoken; little is said.

Let’s take one example. Half-way through the game (or towards the end of series 2), Ellie has tracked down and tortured one of Abby’s friends for information on her whereabouts. Afterwards, she talks to her lover Dina about what happened.

In the game, it’s harrowing. Ellie is visibly shaken by what she’s just witnessed herself do. “I made her talk.” She says. And then to Dina: “I don’t want to lose you.” “Good,” comes Dina’s reply. And that’s it. Cut to black. Little is spoken; much is said.

But where the scenes last about 30 seconds in the game, in the TV show it’s over five minutes long. “I made her talk. I thought it would be harder to do, but it wasn’t. It was easy. I just kept hurting her.” So says Ellie, halfway through the conversation. The writers are clearly trying to make explicit Ellie’s fear that she’s losing herself, and Dina by extension, in her thirst for revenge. But in making clear what was left unsaid in the game, the power of the moment is undercut. Much is spoken; little is said.

“I know writers who use subtext and they’re all cowards,” Garth Marenghi once said. I can only assume he writes for HBO now.

It’s a shame the scene gets fluffed as badly as it does, because really it’s the centrepiece of the narrative. Faced with unthinkable violence, Ellie chooses to repay the act in kind. But, in hunting down and torturing those responsible, ultimately Ellie finds herself becoming less and less human with each act of revenge. Here, in this conversation with Dina, Ellie begins to glimpse the reality of this. That acts of violence towards others are ultimately also acts of violence towards her own nature.

This is, as it turns out, a deeply Christian notion. Where other Ancient Near Eastern creation myths depict their gods as creating the world through violent and bloody struggle, in Genesis God merely speaks life into being. Where Jesus’ disciples would violently overthrow their Roman oppressors, he instead says “those who live by the sword, die by the sword.”

Moreover, Jesus’ death by crucifixion was unspeakably cruel and violent, encompassing protracted public humiliation, sexual abuse, and mutilation. It is here that Christ draws the suffering of the world to himself, that we might be given the opportunity to live free from the ongoing cycle of violence that surrounds us. Not that we might avoid having violence done to us, but that we might find the strength not to be violent in turn.

And this is the ultimate paradox at the centre of Christianity: that the greatest show of strength the world has ever seen is found in Christ’s being nailed to a tree.

Violence begets violence begets violence begets violence. That’s the message of The Last of Us Part II; albeit one conveyed in a rather ham-fisted way. While I’m not optimistic, I hope the next series of the TV show manages to fix the game’s wobbly narrative structure to convey this in a way that is nuanced and compelling. Because it’s a message we desperately need to hear.

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