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

Community

Culture

Football

Friendship

15 August 2025

4 min read

As the season starts, here's why fans go mad for football

The game is part of life, but not all of life

Henry Corbett

Henry Corbett, a vicar in Liverpool and chaplain to Everton Football Club.

A football stand displays a long banner with text on it.

Everton F.C.

“I hate football,” said the mother of two mad keen footballing children. The clue to the hatred is maybe in the ‘mad keen’. Why do children and adults care so much about football?

“That Champions League music is so pompous…!”

“It’s only a football match! They make it too important. If their team loses then they are miserable for the whole weekend.”

“We can’t plan holidays until the fixtures come out.”

The money spent, the jobs refused, lost or short-changed, all because of football. A giant banner at a recent Everton home game read “I simply love you more than I love life itself”.

And there is football manager Bill Shankly wisdom: “Football is not a matter of life and death. It’s more important than that.” At least that was a typical Shankly quip, hyperbole for effect.

Why do some of us love football so much?

It often goes back to childhood. Playing with mates, scoring a goal, saving a goal, enjoying the togetherness, the shared aim, the friendships formed. Then there’s that first experience of going to a match. Up the stairs and there before you is a great huge rectangular expanse of green grass. Back in the day, it was maybe not so green, but still way more impressive than your back garden or the local park. Then comes the drama, unscripted, of the game. The sways of emotion, the joy, the frustration, and all experienced as part of a bigger community. When you kick a ball with your mates aged 50, or go to a game aged 80, you are doing something that connects you with your childhood enthusiasm, joy and wonder.

Then there are the family connections. You may have gone to that first match with your Mum, Dad, Grandad, older brother or sister. When Everton supporters were asked about their feelings at the last Premier League game at Goodison Park, again and again they referenced family members who they had gone to the match with. Some passed away, some no longer able to go, even some whose ashes were buried behind the goal.

There are the great memories of games seen or even played in. That win from 2-0 down, that last minute goal, the euphoria of a Cup win against the odds. And the memories are shared ones, with family, with friends. Football can write some miserable scripts, 0-0, 0-1, 0-6, but it can also write some wonderful memorable dramas.

Love for family, for friends, for a team, for players is a deep emotion and when that love is linked to victory or defeat the stakes are raised.

There is another reason which can touch us all, football-lovers or football-haters. Deep down we all want to be winners in life, not losers. The feeling of victory, not defeat, is such a treasured one. And the win, or loss, is a shared one: we are part of a group together, an identity together. Love for family, for friends, for a team, for players is a deep emotion and when that love is linked to victory or defeat the stakes are raised. In life we want goodness to win over evil, kindness to win over cruelty. The reason every Church shows the symbol of the Cross is because there was the ultimate demonstration of purposeful love, the sacrifice for the sins of the world, down the ages, across the world. When the apostle Paul writes to beleaguered, persecuted Christians facing death at the hands of Emperor Nero, he tells them “We are more than conquerors,” more than winners.

Football, playing or watching, taps into that deep feeling of victory. “We’re on the march with (manager’s name here!) army…. And we’ll really shake them up when we win the FA Cup…” When my team faced the prospect of relegation I wondered why I was feeling butterflies, and more than butterflies, in my stomach. Why did I care so much about this game of football, and the result at the weekend? Yes, because it affected people’s lives, because it would mean loss of income and job losses at the club if relegation happened. But also, because the feeling of defeat, of failure, would hang over us, and that feeling goes deep, to the pit of the stomach.

So why do some of us care so much? Because football taps into deep feelings; of family and friendship, joy and elation, togetherness and identity, and that wonderful feeling of victory… or the sorrow of defeat. Those feelings go deep. The problem is that football, unlike the Cross, sometime delivers, but definitely doesn’t always. That’s a reason why the mum of those those two mad-keen football-loving children should try and make sure that her two sons have other interests besides football, another faith beside faith in their team. Football is part of life, but not all of life. I also hope she stops hating what can be a beautiful, enchanting, community-fostering game, with many a helpful story to tell.

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