It’s probably not too much of a surprise by this point that I went to see the new Exorcist movie at the cinema. I would have done so anyway, but I kept being hit over the head with advertising for it when I was watching YouTube videos. Funnily enough, after actually watching the movie at the cinema, I’ve not seen anymore trailers for it.
Unfortunately, this movie wasn’t anywhere like as good as it could have been. It did rip off a lot from the original, such as the scene with the fighting dogs…although that scene lacked the subtlety that I assume the first one was going for.
One thing I did like in this movie was the relationship between Angela and her father, Victor. Their interactions at the beginning made me smile…and I could empathise with Angela over being raised without a parent. Victor and Sorenne’s relationship at the beginning was shown to be really sweet, so Sorenne then dying was difficult to watch.
I would have liked to see a bit more of Katherine’s relationship with her family, along with her friendship with Angela before the girls decided to try and contact the ghost of Angela’s mother. Unfortunately, once that event occurred, I did feel that the movie went downhill.
I did watch the original The Exorcist before seeing this one…and there was a stark contrast between how this movie handled the horror and how the original handled it. While the first one moved gradually, this movie pretty much went all out right from the start…and I think that this movie did suffer from that. A lot of the horror scenes were predictable, ‘cheap’ horror scares (light turning on and girl suddenly appears in the bathroom), or shown in the trailer. And while it was nice to see a return of Chris from the original movie, this movie did seem to completely contradict her established character from the first movie.
I didn’t think this movie was a very good one. There were two girls possessed, but only one of them had been shown enough to form any kind of emotional attachment to her. Katherine wasn’t nearly as developed as Angela was. I had no idea why a girl brought up in a Christian family had decided to try and contact the ghost of her friend’s mother.
I will say that I liked the bringing together of people with differing beliefs and faiths. I kind of wish that had been explored a bit more, with the idea of all of them needing to play a part in the exorcism. Sadly, that wasn’t enough to raise this movie past ‘mediocre’ horror, at least in my eyes. I won’t be watching this movie again.
Ink of Blood 