Why The Exorcist: Believer Failed
William Peter Blatty Was Right About The Exorcist's Title
The other issue here, though, is that while The Exorcist maintains a legacy as being the greatest horror movie of all time, both the series and the exorcism genre as a whole have seen diminishing returns in the 50 years since the first film's release. Of the now six installments in The Exorcist franchise, only two are legitimately great, and one of those two - the Blatty-directed Exorcist III - was initially met with a tepid response from audiences and critics.
At the time, Blatty lobbied hard for the film not to carry the Exorcist title and to instead use the name Legion like his novel, mainly due to the fact there wasn't to be an exorcism in the film, but also because of concerns over Exorcist II going down as one of the worst films ever made and thus toxifying "The Exorcist" as a title. Blatty was conscious of this in 1990 - 33 years ago - and claimed that studio executives admitted to him after The Exorcist III's release that "The Exorcist" titling was having a negative effect on its audience lure.
Not that it mattered though, as the same mistake was repeated twice again in the 2000s and now once more with The Exorcist: Believer. While there have been successful possession and Exorcist-style films since Friedkin's original, they have proven few and far between. The Exorcist has a legendary reputation, but it seemingly hasn't been enough to overcome the glut of bad genre entries and for a sequel to thusly cash in that credit.
But all of this comes back to the biggest issue with The Exorcist: Believer - it should never have been made. It may have been the scares that made The Exorcist a phenomenon, but it has endured because of the theology that was inexorably tied to Blatty's own relationship with his faith. This is something that fails to register with Believer on the most profound level, ensuring its status as another insipid example of the requel era, as well as one that, quite simply, never stood a chance in the first place.