Linda Blair returns to the franchise that made her a horror icon in “The Exorcist: Believer,” director David Gordon Green’s direct sequel to the 1973 classic.
The sequel centers on best friends Angela (Lidya Jewett) and Katherine (Olivia O’Neill) venturing into the woods to try and communicate with Angela’s dead mom Sorenne (Tracey Graves). (She succumbed to injuries sustained while pregnant during a Haitian earthquake, though she was able to give birth to Angela). But their mini-seance instead lets in an evil spirit that possesses them both. Angela’s skeptic single dad Victor (Leslie Odom Jr.) reaches out to Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn, reprising her role from the original “Exorcist”) in an effort to help them.
But while Pazuzu is the dark force that inhabited Chris’ daughter Regan (Blair) back in the day, this time it’s the demon goddess Lamashtu. “If I’m following the story of a young woman who’s lost her mother, it’s a natural fit to find the girlfriend of Pazuzu to have escorted us there,” Green says. Lamashtu is “a demon that could have the insight into some of the horrors that have come before, but also be applicable to a mother that’s deceased in childbirth.”
Let’s break down the “Believer” finale, a key cameo and where the new “Exorcist” trilogy goes from here.
Like the original, “Believer” culminates with an exorcism of the two girls. Through them, the demon orders the parents to determine which one lives and which dies. The demonic Angela reveals Victor told doctors to save his pregnant wife over his unborn child 13 years earlier. He refuses to pick between the kids, but Katherine’s father (Norbert Leo Butz) chooses his own child. However, in a twist, the demon kills Katherine and Angela lives.
