Ann Dowd

Review of “The Exorcist: Believer”

Pain of loss transcends cultural, religious and national differences. We all lose someone or something special or precious to us. The most recent pain of loss in my life was a dog. My wife and I adopted a shaggy terrier mix we named Roy. Roy was bright and spunky, welcoming us home with jumps, kisses and a combination howl/growl we called a trumpet. It never failed to bring a smile to our faces as we knew we were truly welcomed by “our boy Roy.” As he aged, he jumped less and then stopped all together, and we got no more trumpets, but we knew Roy was happy to see us, nonetheless. Roy’s spine was deteriorating and one day he lay on the floor unmoving for 24 hours. Encouragements to eat or asking if he needed to go outside were met with the same disinterest. That’s when we knew it was time. The next day, we said a tearful farewell to our boy Roy. My wife and I cried for hours and mutually agreed we would get no more dogs as the pain of their passing was too much to bear for a third time. A rescued beagle/basset mix named Ernie was the first dog we had as a couple. He died unexpectedly after cancer surgery, and my wife and I cried for hours. It isn’t fair our pets don’t live as long as we do. Saying goodbye to a lifetime’s worth of dogs, cats, fish, lizards, snakes, spiders, or whatever you consider a pet, is a pain that strikes deep. Imagine the pain of losing a loved one, responsible for giving you life, you never had the chance to meet. That pain kicks off the events of “The Exorcist: Believer.”

Victor Fielding (Leslie Odom Jr.) and his wife Sorenne (Tracey Graves) are on their honeymoon in Haiti. Victor, a photographer, is catching hundreds of photos of island life while his very pregnant wife is enjoying the sites. While shopping, Sorenne meets a voodoo practitioner who offers a blessing of protection for her unborn child. Sorenne goes back to rest at the hotel while Victor continues to take photos when the 2010 Haiti earthquake strikes, causing a partial collapse of the hotel. Victor finds a badly injured Sorenne in the rubble. In the hospital, doctors tell Victor they can only save either Sorenne or their unborn child. Thirteen years later, Victor is taking family portraits to support himself and daughter Angela (Lidya Jewett). Attending junior high, Angela is friends with Katherine (Olivia Marcum). One day after school, the pair heads off into the nearby woods without telling anyone where they are going. Angela is hoping to use a scarf of her mother’s to help in contacting her spirit during a ritual, with Katherine’s assistance. Earlier on their drive to school, Victor notices Angela has the scarf and takes it from her. Neither girl returns home, leading Victor, and Katherine’s parents Miranda and Tony (Jennifer Nettles and Norbert Leo Butz), to call the police. A three-day search finds nothing, but the girls are found by accident in a barn 30 miles from where they were last seen. The girls are unharmed, but they don’t remember what happened to them or how long they’ve been missing. Doctors believe the girls’ unemotional manner is due to shock and both are allowed to go home with their parents. When strange things begin happening at both girl’s homes and both display unusual aggression, nurse Ann (Ann Dowd) who has treated both girls since their return, and is Victor’s neighbor, brings Victor a book written by Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn) about her daughter’s experience of possession by a demon. Victor is skeptical as he lost his faith after Sorenne died but is convinced by Ann to read the book. Seeing similarities between the events in MacNeil’s book and his own daughter’s case, Victor tracks her down and convinces her to help.

The 1973 “The Exorcist” is one of my favorite films. While some of the effects may look a bit dated in today’s digital age, the film builds a sense of dread and tension almost from the first scene that transcends time. The idea of a child undeniably overtaken by a demon from Hell, or by anything beyond their control, should send shivers down the spine of everyone. While I have no children of my own, I can sympathize with Chris MacNeil and the plight she finds herself and Regan in. From the setting in an upscale home to the look of the MacNeil family, the events of “The Exorcist” stabs at the heart of what most people aspire to be: Prosperous and normal.

“The Exorcist: Believer” updates the setting to modern time but reflects the family dynamics of the original with a single father raising his daughter alone. It also introduces other faith systems in the battle against the demon. Fundamentalist Christians, Evangelicals, Catholics and Haitian Vodou joins forces in the battle for the young girls’ souls. It’s an idea that might have drawn howls of protest at one time, giving equal weight to all forms of spiritual worship, but it makes sense for the story to include them all.

The performances by Leslie Odom Jr., Ann Dowd, Jennifer Nettles, Norbert Leo Butz, Lidya Jewett and Olivia Marcum are all first rate. The sense of fear and anger from the parents is palpable. Nettles and Butz play the conservative couple as somewhat looking down on Odom. Their clashes over finding, then caring for, their daughters have a hint of classism, and Katherine’s parents also seem slightly racist. While the racism isn’t overt, their reactions to Angela’s father always feels a touch aggressive.

Ann Dowd’s character has a painful backstory that is exposed over time, giving her nurse Ann a complex set of feelings as she assists in driving out the demon. It’s a history the demon uses to make Ann question her faith and ability. It’s a nice story touch that gives what could be a minor character more emotional weight.

Lidya Jewett and Olivia Marcum are great as the demon-afflicted Angela and Katherine. While the special effects makeup and demonic voice provided by Lize Johnston do most of the heavy lifting, the pair adds to the effects with facial expressions that work well in conveying the evil, the pain and torment both are facing. We don’t get much time with the two prior to their possession, but they don’t seem mismatched as two friends.

It’s great seeing Ellen Burstyn again as Chris MacNeil. She isn’t given much to do and is mostly missing in the second half of the film, but Burstyn raising the caliber of any project she’s in. MacNeil isn’t looking to return to the demon-fighting game considering what her first go round cost her, but she does it because a father’s love convinces her to rejoin the conflict. Since “The Exorcist: Believer” is the first of a planned trilogy, perhaps we’ll get an opportunity to see more of Ms. Burstyn in the future.

“The Exorcist: Believer” is rated R for some violent content, disturbing images, language and sexual references. We see the aftermath of the Haitian earthquake with bodies buried in rubble and injured people. The girls are mostly seen with cuts, bleeding and/or black ooze from the mouth, contact lenses making their eyes look milky or a different color, blistered feet, toenails and fingernails coming off and bleeding, amongst other injuries. During the exorcism, one of the girls expels a black solid mass from her mouth. We see one character’s head twisted around, breaking their neck. One of the girls is shown profusely bleeding from what appears to be the groin. There are a couple of crude sexual references made about the girls while they are missing. Foul language is scattered but includes a couple of uses of the “F-word.”

“The Exorcist: Believer” is a competently made and acted film. It lacks the gravitas and uniqueness of the 1973 original as horror movies seem to come out every week. Also, the film is what I’m referring to as the “Conjuring-ication” of supernatural films. It’s got some stars and the special effects are good, but the film doesn’t generate much tension or a true feeling of peril. Perhaps I’m too old and jaded to find much scary in movies when the news is more than frightening enough. Still, “The Exorcist: Believer” manages to deliver some decent entertainment and I can’t ask for much more than that.

“The Exorcist: Believer” gets four stars out of five.

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Review of “Our Brand is Crisis”

Former political strategist Jane Bodine (Sandra Bullock) is out of politics after several successful, and not so successful, campaigns. She has suffered with depression and substance abuse (leading to her nickname Calamity Jane) and being away from the stress, doing pottery in her cabin in the woods, has helped calm her mind. Nell and Ben (Ann Dowd and Anthony Mackie) visit Jane hoping to get her to join their efforts on the campaign of Bolivian presidential candidate Senator Castillo (Joaquim de Almeida) who is way behind in the polls with about three months left before election day. Advising the leading candidate is Jane’s rival Pat Candy (Billy Bob Thornton). Pat is more than willing to do anything to help his candidate win, a lesson Jane has learned several times already. Every time she has faced him, Jane has lost. Ben impresses upon Jane the importance of the election for the people of Bolivia which has a history of violent uprisings and bloody coup d’état. Feeling the rush of a political campaign quickly envelopes Jane in the excitement and fervor of competition and dirty tricks and soon some of her old habits begin to resurface.

“Our Brand is Crisis” is based on a 2005 documentary of the same name that followed American political consultants as they worked with candidates in the 2002 Bolivian presidential election. Having not seen that documentary I can’t say if the level of dirty tricks and shenanigans match up with what is in the movie. I can say the movie plays a bit of a dirty trick on the audience as it pounds the message of “win at all costs” for most of its running time then tries to become a feel-good story of redemption in the last few minutes. Like many sudden changes of heart, I didn’t buy it.

Sandra Bullock is fantastic in “Our Brand is Crisis.” Her intensity and comic sensibility mix well to make Jane Bodine a fascinating character. Starting out as a bit of an emotional and physical wreck, the pace and seriousness of the campaign begins to bring Jane back to life. Before long, she is a huge cheerleader for her candidate and it sweeps the other characters and the audience along whether we like it or not. Bullock is the soul of the film. It doesn’t work if the audience doesn’t accept Jane as a juggernaut, throwing out ideas and strategies while working with a candidate that doesn’t always believe in her plans. This leads to some of the best moments in the film when Jane must make the candidate agree with her ideas even when they go against his personal beliefs. Sometimes the dirtiest tricks are played against the candidate for whom you work.

Movies like “Our Brand is Crisis” and “Primary Colors” give what feels like an inside look at how modern political campaigns are run. As the old saying goes, “Don’t ask how the sausage is made.” While it is likely the film is highly fictionalized and the kinds of things shown don’t actually happen it does paint a picture that is somewhat damning of the campaign process and how easily the electorate can be swayed or distracted by meaningless controversies. “Our Brand is Crisis” takes a cynical look at modern politics and is, for the most part, highly entertaining.

Where the movie lost me is in the final few minutes. Without giving too much away, we are shown a driven, dedicated soldier that charges the enemy with no mercy then at the end we are shown the equivalent of that same soldier now walking a picket line protesting against everything she used to stand for. The movie wants us to believe everything Jane has done leads her to a moral awakening. The movie uses a friendship that develops between Jane and a young volunteer she names Eddie, played by Reynaldo Pacheco, as the catalyst of that awakening. Considering how long Jane has been fighting in the electoral trenches, it doesn’t seem like enough of a motivation for her to lay down her rhetorical weapons and begin fighting for the other side. It feels like an attempt to turn this political machine into something touchy-feely and it makes everything that comes before it meaningless. Perhaps that is the point: That everything she has done before was meaningless and now she is trying to make a positive impact on the world. If that was the message then the script writer didn’t do a good enough job of making the case that Jane was ripe for a conversion. Instead, it feels more like a sell out and a cheap attempt to force a happy ending on a film that didn’t necessarily need one.

“Our Brand is Crisis” is rated R for some sexual references and language. The sexual references are rather mild and there aren’t many of them. Foul language is scattered but sometimes intense.

I could almost overlook the ending of “Our Brand is Crisis” because Sandra Bullock is so good as Jane Bodine. The rest of the cast does a great job as well with kudos to Billy Bob Thornton for giving us a slimy but likable villain; however, the ending works so hard at trying to make us feel bad about enjoying the hijinks of the main characters it’s like a parent wagging a finger in your face for doing something bad. I don’t appreciate being scolded by my entertainment when it does such a great job of making Jane and Pat so amusing in their deviltry. The movie tries to have it both ways but fails to make a strong enough case for the main character’s conversion to philanthropy.

“Our Brand is Crisis” gets four stars for everything except the last five minutes.

This week it’s the return of Brown…Charlie Brown. There’s also some British spy movie coming out. I’ll see and review at least one of them.

The Peanuts Movie—

Spectre—

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