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…

Article

Culture

Music

3 March 2025

4 min read

As creativity and AI battle, greed is the true enemy

Every string plucked, stitch sewn, brushstroke painted, is a sign we’re made for more than utility.

Alexandra Kytka-Sharpe

Alexandra is a writer exploring the role of faith in the arts, fashion, and design

A black and white list of music tracks reads: IS THIS WHAT WE WANT. THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT MUST NOT LEGALISE MUSIC THEFT.

1,000 artists, one message.

Is the battle between AI and creativity over before it began? A collective of 1,000 musicians have released a silent album to protest new government copyright laws that would make it easier for companies to train AI models without paying artists. The album, titled “Is This What We Want?,” has a tracklist that reads “The British Government Must Not Legalise Music Theft To Benefit AI Companies.”

But this isn’t the first time that new technology has threatened the livelihood of musicians, nor the first time musicians have fought back. And the lesson to be learned from the past is that the real enemy of creativity isn’t technology- it’s greed.

Musicians on strike

The invention of the record player forever changed the music industry. It’s difficult to imagine a time when you could only hear music if someone was playing a live instrument. As music records grew rapidly in popularity, payments to the musicians behind the records lagged behind.

Up until the 1940s, record companies paid studio musicians only for the time in the studio. Playing records on live radio was cheaper than hiring big bands (which had previously been the norm) because the musicians wouldn’t see any revenue from their repeated use. But in August 1942, fed up at the lack of royalties paid from music records, the American Federation of Musicians went on strike.

The silence lasted nearly 2 years. During the strike, musicians were allowed to play for live radio but banned from playing on records.

At first, record companies relied on releasing music they had already recorded. But when it became clear that the strike would last longer than expected, they began to rely on acapella voices in place of big bands for new releases. The strike concluded in 1944 as record players conceded to the American Federation of Musicians and set up a system of paying royalties to musicians. The battle was over.

The technology creativity face-off

Technology has often seemed to be at odds with human creativity despite emerging from it. Human creativity invented the record player, but the record player threatened the human creativity of all those musicians playing live.

In a similar way, artificial intelligence was both invented by creative humans and trained on the work of other creative humans. And yet, its very existence seems to threaten the work of thousands. AI’s threat is felt in every corner of the creative industries- in music, illustration, art, film and photography. And it’s not just a worry for Top 40 singers. Generative AI threatens to replace graphic and web design for small businesses, music in the background of commercials and videos, illustrations on mass produced birthday cards and souvenirs- all areas of creative work where artists receive a modest income and don’t become household names.

Companies use technology as a mirage to hide the real threat behind its computer generated glow- the greed of the human heart.

he Christian faith offers a few truths that make sense of this tension between AI and creativity. The first is human creativity is not mere ornamentation- it is at the very heart of what it means to be made in God’s image. At the very beginning of the Bible, God is Creator. Unlike God, humans cannot make something from nothing. But we can produce wonders that inspire, that reflect the goodness, truth and beauty of the world God created for us. Every string plucked, stitch sewn, brushstroke painted, is a sign that humans were made for more than utility. We were made for transcendence.

The Christian faith also teaches that human selfishness gets in the way of the transcendental vision God has for us.

The invention of the record player created problems for musicians, but it was the unwillingness of companies to pay musicians fairly for their work that posed the real threat. Companies use technology as a mirage to hide the real threat behind its computer generated glow- the greed of the human heart.

As AI continues to be adopted, executives join the chorus speaking about the “threat of AI” and the need to prioritise human creativity. Yet the decisions of the same executives value human creativity in financial terms by the compensation (or lack thereof) that real artists receive.

Companies treat new technologies as inevitable– they might even tell employees that those who can’t learn to use new technology will be left behind. But the reality is that companies shape the direction of technological advancement. There is no “neutral” or “inevitable” direction to technology. Technology can solve human problems- but first humans decide what problems need solving. AI may help us solve problems that benefit all of us- like the work being done to synthesise proteins that can have great impacts in medicine and science.

But there is no reason companies must use generative AI for creative work. People may point to money and time saved, shareholder value created. And this is where the real contradiction lies. For creativity is not a problem that needs to be solved, but a gift for us to partake in.

Is This What We Want?

The album by “1000 UK Artists” contains the sound of empty music studios- a future the group fears if musicians are replaced with AI who were trained on their talent. Session musicians, cover artists, violinists who busk in the streets or play in weddings, all are in danger from AI being trained on their hard work for free.

Knowing that technology is never neutral, the album’s title “Is This What We Want?” poses a good question. What kind of world do we want to live in? What should our technology be building towards?

For me, I want a world that encourages real human creativity– the kind given to us by God, the original creative. I want a world where technology isn’t a way for the rich to become richer but for our communities to become better places for human connection. Technology should give us more time to create art, not less. The battle between creativity and AI is in the hands of lawmakers for now. But the battle to end human greed? That’s eternal.