The Exorcist: Believer is the latest calculated risk from Blumhouse. Helmed again by director David Gordon Green, who delivered diminishing returns, with his Halloween reboot trilogy, we get a paranormal thriller that is ultimately focused on entertaining as opposed to challenging the audience. That’s not to say the film is bad, it’s actually pleasantly entertaining. We easily connect with the protagonists, and the danger is quickly identified. Perhaps that is the issue.

The film opens with Victor (Leslie Odom Jr.), a widower in Georgia who is raising his daughter and making a living as a portrait photographer. Victor’s daughter Angela (Lidya Jewett), is a fiercely independent daddy’s girl with a strong desire to connect with her deceased mother. After school, Angela makes plans to hang bestie, Katherine (Olivia O’Neill). Later that night, Angela doesn’t come home which leads to the realization that neither she nor her friend Katherine made it home. A manhunt through the forest is conducted and, after three stressful days, the girls are found in a barn 30 miles away with no memory of what happened.

After their return home, the two girls begin to behave strangely. This is where the script gets interesting. While Victor deals with his daughter’s increasingly strange behavior in a pragmatic way, Katherine’s more religious parents lean on the power of spirituality and faith. Angela is immediately hospitalized while Katherine is allowed to wreak havoc on her more insular family structure. Had the film stayed in this space it might have actually had something profound to say about faith, mystery, and the scant tools humans have to discern truth. Instead, the film chooses an easier route that merely mines the material for the meaning of family and hope. This is not to dismiss either, but within the Exorcist franchise, we DO expect to be unsettled a little.

While a safe journey, the film is not without its disturning pleasures. Legacy characters return, including what amounts to an extended cameo by Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn). For horror fans, this is equal, or greater to seeing Jamie Lee Curtis return as Laurie Strode. This is an iconic actor, returning to the Mt. Everest of roles, if but for a brief moment. Burstyn shines again and we see what she brought to the original. This is an Oscar-winning actor taking a victory lap and it’s delicious. I would also say that, across the board, performances are solid. Not the least of which are the two leads, Jewett and O’Neill. These kids work and they work hard to turn out some gnarly performances. No, they don’t touch anything Blair did in the original, but really, who can? Also a final reminder, never trust Ann Dowd.

The Exorcist: Believer is a safe foray into the sub-genre of religious horror, in particular possession. The film is entertaining enough but it fails to address the more frightening issues that dwell in deeper philosophical debates. In short, go for the franchise, stay for the spectacle.

6 Out of 10