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

30 May 2025

4 min read

Ethan Hunt is MI Jesus, and it’s ridiculous

The final instalment of Mission Impossible warns about AI, yet plays out as if written by a chatbot.

Yaroslav Walker

Yaroslav is Vicar of Christ Church, Hampstead.

Tom Cruise playing Ethan Hunt in an open necked shirt looks perplexed.

Tom Cruise in action.

Is this the FINAL reckoning? I’m not sure. I hope so. There has been speculation whether Tom Cruise will reprise his role as Ethan Hunt in further franchise instalments. He has expressed interest, while also suggesting that the use of the word ‘final’ is purposeful and indicative. Let us all pray that he’s being honest. I mean…he must be exhausted. The stress and strain, the pressure and pain, that he puts his body through for every Mission Impossible film is approaching elder abuse – he is 62 after all.

In a departure from tradition, Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning is an immediate sequel to Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning, which released in 2023. The series which has thrived on a formula of releasing stand-alone spy stories, allowing us to enjoy familiar characters in new scenarios, has decided to make a two-parter…although you wouldn’t know it. You don’t need to have seen Dead Reckoning to pay your money to watch Final Reckoning, as the script assumes you’ve not only missed the immediate prequel, but have never viewed any other Mission Impossible film.

Goodness me, the film is plodding. It begins with a message from the President (Angela Bassett), delivered to Cruise’s super-spy Hunt. In previous instalments such messages have been a punchy way to set the stakes, roll the pitch, and then give the rest of the screen time over to remarkable action set-pieces. On this occasion we have an interminably long, and irritatingly portentous, monologue detailing why Ethan Hunt is the best of spies, the best of men, and essentially MI Jesus. The only man who can save the world from a literal apocalypse.

The premise of the film is that the malevolent, power-hungry AI known as ‘The Entity’ (could no one have thought of a better name, REALLY!?), which Hunt failed to stop in the previous film, is now at large and tipping the world towards destruction. It is manipulating the media, gaslighting governments, and slowly infiltrating the nuclear arsenals of the world, all in preparation to annihilate most of the human race in a nuclear holocaust. It then plans to rule the remaining vestiges of humanity and create a new utopia for itself. Only Ethan Hunt can stop it…just as long as he convinces world leaders to trust him, finds the nuclear submarine where ‘The Entity’ originated, defeats hundreds of bad guys, and infiltrates a top-secret bunker in South Africa.

We’re a world away from the lean and mean story of the first MI, where we only had the identities of CIA assets at stake!

Its rubbish. Genuinely rubbish.

The script is ripe. Nay! It is overripe. NAY! Burn the whole house down, because the brie has grown limbs and the fruit bowl is plotting your death. Every other conversation involves either Cruise pontificating on how the only way to defeat ‘The Entity’ is love and trust and the age of Aquarius, or someone explaining to Cruise how this mission is his destiny, because only he is good and pure enough to succeed. He’s MI Jesus, and it’s ridiculous.

The film plods and plods and plods. The whole point of this franchise is to provide the viewer with regular, breath-taking action, and yet the first hour-plus is a litany of exposition and call-backs. Ethan travels to several European capitals, for about thirty seconds apiece, before formulating his plan. This is confusing and jarring, but to add to this pain, the audience is tortured with disorienting, quick-cut montages of Hunt’s previous adventures. The plot seems to be determined to link this final, world-ending catastrophe to his past escapades…except MI2…no one has love for that.

Unfortunately, all these positives are packaged in such a self-aggrandising and cack-handed manner as to be rendered inert.

By the time the action really kicks in I was exhausted and in no mood. This is a shame, because the action is truly spectacular. A long sequence in a submarine – which is both well below safe diving depth, but is also slowly falling of an underwater cliff. A breath-taking fight between two biplanes. Gunfire galore. I recognised its brilliance on an intellectual level, but enjoyed none of it. I was too damned bamboozled by over an hour of nonsense beforehand.

The performances are fine. Cruise is the last remaining true action star, putting himself through a gruelling regimen to ensure he performs his own stunts. This shows on the screen and is very much appreciated and commendable. Simon Pegg returns as Benji to provide the comic relief. Ving Rhames’ Luther has a brief appearance which is bitter-sweet and lovable. Henry Czerny and Rolf Saxon are delightful additions – the only call-backs to the first film which don’t irritate, and actually elevate the film.

Mission Impossible: Final Reckoning is fine. It is serviceable. It delivers the heart-stopping thrills. It has timely theme: of what true humanity and human relationship is in a world dominated by AI, technology, simulated reality, and simulated interaction. This is all good. Unfortunately, all these positives are packaged in such a self-aggrandising and cack-handed manner as to be rendered inert. For a film whose story serves as an (admittedly histrionic) warning about the dangers of AI, it plays out as if designed by chatbot.

The Mission Impossible films have always been a vehicle for Tom Cruise. This has been their greatest strength – he is the last true movie star after all, and we may never see such a charismatic and powerful screen idol again. This has also been their greatest weakness. What a shame this only became apparent in the (potential) final outing.

2 stars.

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