‘The Exorcist: Believer’ possesses none of the original’s thrills

Demons take over not one but two girls — Angela (Lidya Jewett, left) and Katherine (Olivia O’Neill) — in “The Exorcist: Believer.” (Universal Pictures)

Sacrilege.

Nearly 50 years after William Friedkin’s “The Exorcist” elevated the horror genre to Oscar-level greatness and produced chills and thrills that resonate with us to this day, the direct sequel “The Exorcist: Believer” is a tasteless, tacky, uninspired and just plain lousy knockoff that upchucks pea soup-colored porridge all over the legacy of the original, from the crummy-looking and tedious exorcism sequence to the murky cinematography, to the return of an iconic character who is given an absolutely awful and borderline offensive storyline. (More on that in a moment.)