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

Masculinity

19 March 2025

4 min read

Adolescence reflects our darkest corners, here's how we can respond

Each one-take episode is an exercise in empathy.

Lauren Westwood

Lauren writes on faith, community, and anything else that compels her to open the Notes app.

A father walks with his son away from the camera, his hand on his son's shoulder.

Netflix.

‘Is it really that bad out there for our children?’

This was the text my mum sent our family group chat following episode four of Adolescence, the astonishing new drama from Netflix. Anyone familiar with previous work from Stephen Graham will know to expect grit and challenge, but Adolescence is different.

Adolescence paints a stark picture of a world gone wrong. We observe this in the Miller family who, within a few minutes, stand and watch as their lives are upended when their teenage son and brother is arrested on suspicion of murder.

Technically, it is remarkable. The script is stunning. The cast are incredible. The direction is impeccable. The camera perceives the action in one continuous take, and the viewer receives this without a single edit. We watch each second of the hour-long episodes with precise focus, curiosity, tension and compassion. As the camera is moved, so are we. We become immersed in the spiralling realities of the detective, of the disbelieving father, of the psychologist, of the scrawny boy who wets his bed when armed police raid his bedroom. We pass person to person and take on their emotional load, even for a moment. These are not simply tug-on-the-heartstrings moments, watching Adolescence is an exercise in empathy.

These one-take episodes flawlessly capture extended scenes of flawed humanity. Minute by minute, we learn more about Jamie Miller, played by Owen Cooper, the thirteen-year-old boy at the centre of it all. His parents are loving. He gets on with his sister. He is polite to the nurse at the police station. Jamie appears like a typical young boy. A worn teddy-bear sits atop his star-adorned bedding that matches the wallpaper. His friends are impish, awkward and they are the usual levels of unkempt. He seems just like any other kid.

These small acts bring light to dark places, and demonstrate how the viewer might live right in a world where much feels wrong.

As the plot unfolds, we see how darkness, and Jamie’s anger, lurks behind a digital life. Mostly hidden in emoji codes and Instagram comments, it is only in episode three when a stream of explicit misogyny pours from Jamie’s mouth. It emerges that his development has been intercepted by exposure to toxic masculinity, incel ideology and the incessant rage of ‘the manosphere.’ We witness the unravelling of lives that are disconnected despite sharing the same roof. Just as the uninitiated are confused by terms like ‘red-pilled’, Jamie’s parents are stunned at why their child would commit such a crime.

Adolescence is a sobering watch because it holds up a mirror to a bleak picture of society. In the same week that Netflix released the series, a teenage boy was sentenced to life imprisonment for the fatal stabbing of a fifteen-year-old girl in the London borough that neighbours my secondary school.

But it is also a rallying cry for social response. The ultimate aim isn’t for the audience to be depressed into stagnancy, but to consider afresh the responsibility we have for each other, particularly for the generations coming behind us, and to take action in our communities. When my mum asked about the reality for ‘our children’, she was supporting this concept of collective responsibility and care for the next generation.

As Adolescence reflects our darkest corners, so does it present those among us who are trying to connect and show up in love for struggling young people. We see this in the detective who goes to the chip-shop with his son in an attempt to build their relationship, and also in the psychologist who carries around a container of mini-marshmallows for Jamie’s hot chocolate. These small acts bring light to dark places, and demonstrate how the viewer might live right in a world where much feels wrong.

The glimpses of positive intergenerational connection in Adolescence should serve as a compelling reminder to churches, a remaining shared space where generations collide. We learn so much from each other that we simply cannot gain from siloed, disconnected living. At its best, the Church provides a space that allows people to break out of their usual circles and habits, to be loved and to love, to be challenged and corrected, to develop a connection to God and to his creation.

To consider again the question, ‘Is it really that bad out there for our children?’

Quite possibly. But in the reflecting of light, however dim it may seem, we are presented with the possibility of something better. As generational barriers come down, we can move beyond empathy and into action.

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