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By Nicholas BarberFeatures correspondent

David Gordon Green's follow-up, released to mark the classic horror's 50th anniversary, is a pale imitation that fails to shock, writes Nicholas Barber.

Audiences were shocked by The Exorcist in 1973, probably because it involved a 12-year-old girl, Regan (Linda Blair), being possessed by a demon, swearing like a docker, vomiting fountains of green goo, and stabbing herself with a crucifix. But William Friedkin's film wasn't just a shocking horror movie, it was a box-office smash which was nominated for 10 Oscars, including best picture; William Peter Blatty went on to win the best adapted screenplay prize for a script based on his bestselling novel.

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It was always going to be impossible to recreate such a phenomenal success, but that hasn't stopped people trying. There have been several forgettable Exorcist sequels and prequels already, and now, to mark the original film's 50th anniversary, David Gordon Green has made a follow-up that is intended as the first part of a trilogy. From 2018 to 2022, he directed three Halloween films starring Jamie Lee Curtis, so making legacy sequels to 1970s horror classics is obviously his favourite occupation.

The Exorcist: Believer has a similar scenario to The Exorcist, only this time the girl is Angela (Lidya Jewett), and the single parent is Victor (Leslie Odom Jr), a widowed photographer. Victor is a loving father, if a little over-protective: he doesn't even want his daughter to study with her friend Katherine (Linda Blair-lookalike Olivia Marcum) after school. Still, perhaps he has a point, because Angela and Katherine sneak off into the woods to see if they can contact Angela's late mother via a seance. They aren't seen again for three days, and when the girls are eventually found on a distant farm, they have no memory of what they've done or where they've been.

You can guess what happens next. Both girls start attacking people and swearing in croaky voices, which means that it won't be long until all the other time-honoured symptoms of demonic possession appear. The atheistic Victor and Katherine's deeply Christian parents try to work out what's going on. Could the girls have been assaulted? Could puberty have brought on some kind of psychosis? Could they have visited a nearby homeless people's camp?

As long as these questions are in the air, The Exorcist: Believer is an atmospheric, quietly unnerving, meticulously constructed supernatural mystery. Maybe it indulges in too many references to the first Exorcist: just because Father Damien (Jason Miller) hit a punchbag in a boxing gym in 1973, there is no reason to have Victor hitting a punchbag in a boxing gym 50 years later. But in general Green and his co-writers do a clever job of evoking the original film's autumnal feel and credible characters, while establishing a new setting and new themes that are intriguing in their own right. The idea of two girls being possessed simultaneously is a promising one, too. Until about halfway through, I was a firm believer in The Exorcist: Believer.

At that stage, though, everything goes wrong so drastically and so suddenly that there are only two feasible explanations: either studio executives instructed Green to churn out a bog-standard modern franchise movie, or else he was possessed by a demon himself. Whatever the explanation, the film deteriorates when the sceptical Victor suddenly decides that his daughter really has been possessed, and makes the snap decision to track down Regan's mother, Chris, played by Ellen Burstyn. Back in the role for the first time since 1973, it's heartening to see the 90-year-old Burstyn looking so strong and beautiful, but from the moment she appears, The Exorcist: Believer loses one IQ point per minute. Green drops the ambiguity, forgets about the homeless people, and throws away the analogy between a possessive father and a possessive demon. He also abandons the careful pacing and subdued mood of the film's first half. In their place, he piles on jump scares, digital effects, sentimental music, and a succession of inspirational speeches: the priests aren't the only people in the story who deliver sermons.

The Exorcist: Believer

Director: David Gordon Green

Cast: Lidya Jewett, Olivia Marcum, Leslie Odom Jr, Ellen Burstyn

Run time: 1hr 51m

Even if you aren't a fan of Friedkin's film, there is no denying the power of its iconic sequences: the arrival of Father Merrin (Max von Sydow) at Chris's house on a foggy night; Regan's head twisting around; the aforementioned swearing, vomiting, and crucifix misuse. Green's film offers nothing to compare with these. There are no images you might put on a poster or a T-shirt, no scenes you might lampoon in a parody. I don't know whether a new film could ever be as upsetting and transgressive as The Exorcist was, but it would have been nice if Green had had a crack at it, instead of serving up imitations of what Friedkin created all those years ago. It was startling to see Blair encased in pale, puffy, scar-streaked prosthetic make-up in the 1973 film. Sticking the same make-up on two young actresses today is about as startling as a trip to a high-street fancy-dress shop.

The rushed, unscary and frankly silly climax has Victor putting together a squad of multi-faith demon-busters, as if he is assembling the Avengers or picking a team for an action-packed heist movie. "Anyone else wanna leave, better leave now," he says, looking and sounding far too badass to be an anxious dad in a horror drama. "Once we start, we're not stopping." And so it is that a film that was shaping up to be an intelligent and respectful homage to The Exorcist descends to the depths of a cheesy, straight-to-streaming rip-off. Viewers should do what Victor advises, and leave.

★★☆☆☆

The Exorcist: Believer is released on 6 October.

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