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Critic's Head-Spinning Review of New 'Exorcist' Horror Film: Too 'Faith Based', 'Hyper-Conservative'

By Maire Clayton October 6, 2023 at 5:00pm

A film critic decided to rip the new “Exorcist” film for being “hyper-conservative” and too “faith-based.”

Writing for the entertainment site IndieWire, David Ehrlich’s umbrage with “The Exorcist: Believer” began within the first sentences.

“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing me that a 2023 legacy sequel to ‘The Exorcist’ might actually make good on its potential,” Ehrlich began.

A sequel to the classic 1973 film, it follows two girls as they make plans to go to the woods with hopes of contacting the dead mother of one of the girls. The two are found three days later and miles from their home — but are now possessed by a demon.

WARNING: The following video contains graphic violence and situations that some viewers may find disturbing.

Ehrlich proceeded to claim in his review that we are “living in a time of right-wing hysteria” and the horror subgenre of demonic possession naturally “reaffirms Christian dogma.”

He added it “is therefore granted special permission to push the boundaries of what the church-going public is willing to bear.”

“‘The Exorcist’ is ultimately as ‘faith-based’ as any of the movies you might see advertised on Fox News today,” Ehrlich claimed.

Will you see the film?

He also decided to take aim at Fox News host Greg Gutfeld, as he claimed his show is scarier than a film dealing with the very real issue of demonic possession.

In April of this year, Father Vincent Lampert of the Archdiocese of Indiana — who is sanctioned to perform exorcisms — said he receives over 3,500 requests per year seeking help from the church.

The following contains spoilers for “The Exorcist: Believer.”

Ehrlich, making his political beliefs painfully clear, added the film “spends its entire running time torturing its main character for prioritizing the well-being of his wife over the safety of her fetus.”

The film opens with a married couple in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, before the birth of their first child. An earthquake strikes and the soon-to-be mother is critically injured, causing the husband to make the difficult decision of either saving his wife or the unborn child.

The film proceeds to make the audience believe he made the decision to save the child, but it is later revealed, while the child is possessed, that he chose his wife and has been living with the guilt ever since.

While Ehrlich decided to make his review politically motivated, he also took issue with the film as a whole, calling it “a hellishly bad legacy sequel.”

The Exorcist: Believer is a hellishly bad legacy sequel made even worse by its weird anti-abortion messaging. a catastrophic start to David Gordon Green’s $400 million reboot trilogy.

my review: https://t.co/CtUF3jNqCs pic.twitter.com/UGZL00tFw3

— david ehrlich (@davidehrlich) October 4, 2023

“The Exorcist: Believer” is playing in theaters as of Friday.

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