No two boogeymen are alike. And yet, director David Gordon Green seemingly assumed he could simply copy and paste his 2018 Halloween sequel onto a new horror franchise and achieve exactly the same results. The Exorcist: Believer is front-loaded with the same generational trauma, as a father’s guilt is inherited by his daughter, unluckily manifesting not through anxiety or depression, but full-blown demonic possession.
The “it’s actually about trauma” approach worked for exactly one Halloween movie, all because it latched onto the idea that Michael Myers is scary because he’s unknowable – is he mortal? Or pure ghoul? Is there a point at which evil robs a person of their humanity? A natural space had been left open for Green’s story of survivor’s guilt and the hollowing effects of a lifetime of PTSD.
