The Michael Knowles Show - The Exorcist： Believer movie REACTION ｜ Michael Knowles

00:00:00.000 This movie sucks. 1.00

00:00:20.840 Before seeing Exorcist Believer, I thought that the worst movie ever made is a movie 0.99

00:00:28.360 by Chris Marker, a French essayist film called Sans Soleil, which, when I was 12 years old,

00:00:34.720 made me want to bash my head against a wall. It was so boring. Second to Sans Soleil is Southside

00:00:41.480 with You, the story, it came out six, seven years ago, of Barack and Michelle Obama's love affair.

00:00:48.360 Now just slightly below, maybe even above Southside with You, is The New Exorcist,

00:00:55.500 one of the worst films I have ever seen in my life. The movie is not scary. The movie is not

00:01:04.320 interesting. The movie isn't even coherent as a movie about an exorcism. Anything good about The

00:01:14.120 Exorcist, the original movie, any and every single thing good about that movie was either taken out

00:01:21.040 or inverted in this new movie. It started out for the first 10 seconds, pretty good, because it

00:01:30.020 started out in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in the voodoo capital of the world, with what looked like a voodoo 1.00

00:01:36.440 incantation around a baby. It's usually not a good sign when the voodoo witches start doing spells and 1.00

00:01:44.180 incantations around your kids. So I thought, okay, that's right. They cast this weird spell,

00:01:47.880 and now the demons are all around there, and we're going to find out how terrible this was, until

00:01:53.080 the woman describes the incantation as being a beautiful blessing.

00:01:59.600 I met this woman today at the market who gave me the most beautiful blessing of protection for Angela.

00:02:07.820 So even now, you think, okay, well, she thinks it's a blessing of protection, but I know,

00:02:12.600 watching The Exorcist, that that's going to cause some demon stuff. But as the movie goes on,

00:02:18.760 you can't figure it out. Does the filmmaker know that this was weird demon stuff? Does the

00:02:24.620 filmmaker think this actually was a blessing of protection? Does the filmmaker really know what

00:02:29.120 this is all about? And we get the answer pretty quickly, which is that no. The first movie is a

00:02:36.860 Christian movie. It's got all sorts of sacrilegious and blasphemous sayings, the kind of things you 1.00

00:02:44.040 might hear in an actual exorcism. But The Exorcist is Christian. There are demons, there are Catholic 1.00

00:02:51.260 priests, and the priests cast out the demons. The priests, standing in for the person of Christ,

00:02:58.940 defeat the devil. In this movie, they go to pains at every single stage to say, this is not a Catholic 0.79

00:03:08.000 thing. This is not a Christian thing. We're not. Please don't ever accuse any of us of being

00:03:13.320 Christian. This is just about demons. 1.00

00:03:16.840 Exorcism is a ritual. Every culture, every religion, they all use different methods. It's

00:03:22.200 going to take all of them.

00:03:23.840 I've grown up with a fascination of religions of all sorts. And this was an opportunity to

00:03:28.800 explore possession through a variety of perspectives. Possession, oppression, pagans and

00:03:34.640 Wiccans. We'll talk about energy attacks. A lot of focus on demons.

00:03:39.420 Blatty, the deeply Catholic author of The Exorcist, must be rolling over in his grave.

00:03:47.640 What this reveals from the first part is not only do the filmmakers of this new movie not understand

00:03:52.820 the source material, The Exorcist. They don't understand the church.

00:03:58.800 And therefore, they don't understand demons. They don't understand anything about this.

00:04:03.500 The filmmakers here have the same attitude toward Christianity that the ancient Roman

00:04:08.380 pagans did, that pagans always have, which is they at best will say, oh, Christianity is

00:04:15.840 fine. You can have your God and we're going to have our gods and there are going to be a lot

00:04:18.660 of gods that everybody can worship. Christianity does not allow for lots of other gods that people

00:04:23.620 can worship. Christianity is an exclusive religion. Christianity says there is one God. It's the

00:04:31.480 beginning of the creed. I believe in one God. If Christianity is true, if the priest has any 0.97

00:04:37.540 ability to cast out the demons, then all those other false religions can't really cast out demons. 0.98

00:04:44.200 In fact, this is the scene when the Pharisees are accusing Christ of being a bad fellow. They say,

00:04:52.040 well, you're casting out demons by the devil. And Christ says, the devil is casting out the devil.

00:04:57.680 A house divided against itself cannot stand.

00:04:59.900 Shaitan, you harib shaitan. 0.86

00:05:02.000 Either Christianity is true and all the other religions are false, or Christianity is false. 0.97

00:05:07.700 And the entire world that The Exorcist takes place in doesn't make any sense. Because the

00:05:12.720 Christian view of all those pagan rituals to cast out demons is that they are, in fact, invoking demons.

00:05:18.740 That's the only way. So they don't, from the very beginning, they don't really get it. But there's

00:05:23.760 this tension in the movie where you say, okay, well, the Ellen Burstyn character, the mom from the

00:05:28.240 first Exorcist movie, when she goes on and she opens up and she says, oh, it's not a Catholic thing.

00:05:32.780 It's not a, it's whatever. You know, we can all do it. Zoroastrians and pagans, whatever.

00:05:36.380 It's not just in one location or one religion or one culture. It's universal.

00:05:44.000 Are they making fun of her? So in the movie, spoiler alert, some girls, a couple of girls get

00:05:48.300 possessed by demons. And I'm skipping over like most of the plot here, because the plot is just

00:05:52.900 terrible and boring. And I was checking my watch the whole time. Anyway, they get, they get possessed

00:05:56.360 by some demons. And one of the dads goes up and finds Ellen Burstyn and says, hey, can you help get

00:06:02.080 the demons out of my daughter? And Ellen Burstyn goes in to try to cast the demons out. And you 1.00

00:06:07.180 think, oh, good grief. They made that, now the Exorcist is a woman. How woke is this thing going 0.56

00:06:11.220 to get? And then Ellen Burstyn in one of her monologues, she says, well, I was prevented

00:06:16.260 from doing this by the patriarchy, but I'm, I'm a minister and I can, and it's just all this

00:06:21.060 woke feminist claptrap. But then the thing that gives you a little hope for the movie is she goes in 1.00

00:06:25.960 and she tries to cast out the demons and it doesn't go very well for her.

00:06:32.080 So this is probably the scariest and goriest part of the whole movie. And it's still pretty cheesy,

00:06:49.360 but at least here you think, okay, Ellen Burstyn's character failed at doing the exorcism. So maybe

00:06:55.760 all of this set up about how, look, man, we can all cast out demons, you know, just using the vibes

00:07:01.300 and, you know, women can do it and priests aren't a thing and nothing really matters, 1.00

00:07:05.560 man. We're just focused on the demons. To see ourselves in this scenario is a huge thing.

00:07:12.320 It's going to open the story up. It's a way to bring it into the present. And that's why

00:07:17.460 representation is so important. It's all about me. At this point, you think, oh, well, maybe that was

00:07:23.980 all BS. And now we're going to have the priest come in and save the day. But from the beginning,

00:07:27.980 they're starting to cast these priests as weak and feckless and confused. There's a scene in which

00:07:33.800 a priest is convinced he should perform an exorcism, but the prelates and the higher-ups

00:07:38.360 all around him, they say, well, I don't know if we can do this. We can't risk doing an exorcism.

00:07:42.760 This is, again, an elementary mistake that had the filmmakers taken any time to investigate what

00:07:52.220 exorcisms actually are or what, you know, Christianity, the faith that constitutes the

00:07:57.720 worldview of this entire movie and cinematic universe, what they actually believe, how the

00:08:02.180 church operates. They could have avoided making these silly mistakes. When the prelates come in, 0.97

00:08:07.680 or whoever the higher-ups are, and they say, Father, this is very, very dangerous. It's dangerous

00:08:13.000 for you. This is a very dangerous situation. Dangerous for you, Father. Dangerous for the

00:08:18.060 Catholic Church. Dangerous for you to perform an exorcism? Why? Has God not conquered the devil? 0.98

00:08:23.940 Has Christ not cast out the demons? What is it? It's not dangerous. The danger for a priest is that

00:08:29.700 the priest might sin. That's a danger for all of us. But if you are in a state of grace, if you have

00:08:35.900 taken on the holy mantle of God and availed yourself of the sacraments, and especially if you've

00:08:40.960 taken holy orders and you're a holy priest, you don't have to fear the devil. No priest is going

00:08:46.080 to go in afraid of the devil. Not with that kind of servile fear. And then they go on, they say,

00:08:50.800 this is very dangerous for the Catholic Church. How is it dangerous for the Catholic Church? It's one

00:08:53.960 of the Catholic Church's jobs is to perform exorcisms. What are you talking about? As though

00:08:58.560 exorcisms are never performed. That's a misconception that a lot of people have in popular life. That's just

00:09:04.680 not true. There are many, many exorcists all around every state, every country, every world.

00:09:09.860 There are exorcists everywhere. The church performs exorcisms regularly. There's not a demon hiding

00:09:15.260 under every rock, but exorcisms are required. In fact, by the way, every time you baptize a baby 0.93

00:09:21.400 in the traditional rite of the Catholic Church, three exorcisms are performed. Exorcism is not some

00:09:27.320 weird exotic thing that hasn't been practiced for a thousand years. So there's no risk to the church.

00:09:31.980 It was just another way to paint the church as being weak and feckless, which is one thing if you're

00:09:36.100 going to do it based on facts. There have been plenty of scandals in the church if you wanted to do it

00:09:40.880 based on facts. This was just based on a complete misunderstanding. They wanted to make sure when they

00:09:46.040 were portraying different communities of faith that they were portraying it accurately. So then we get

00:09:51.700 into the exorcism. These people, they're going to do the exorcism anyway. And there's this woman, oh, this

00:09:57.660 whole, this whole storyline, this woman who was going to become a nun, and then she violates her vow of

00:10:05.880 celibacy and her call to chastity. She has sex with a man, she gets impregnated, and she has an abortion, 0.79

00:10:13.280 which is very unlikely. It's very unlikely that if you're the sort of person who is going to become 0.66

00:10:18.080 a nun, that you are the sort of person who is going to have sex with a man. It's unlikely. It could 0.99

00:10:24.460 happen, but it's unlikely. And it's very, very unlikely. If you're the kind of person who takes

00:10:28.180 life and morality so seriously that you're considering entering into religious life,

00:10:31.960 it's very, very unlikely that you're going to kill a baby through abortion. But anyway,

00:10:35.820 that was the setup for her character. And then this woman decides to take it upon herself 1.00

00:10:42.260 to perform the exorcism. And that would be bad enough. But then they bring in all these other

00:10:48.900 people. There's this witch doctor kind of woman who's filling up a bath with rose petals or 1.00

00:10:54.240 something. This is a reminder, by the way, sometimes religious people get a bad rap for

00:10:59.840 being superstitious. Religious people are the least superstitious people on earth. 0.92

00:11:04.220 I am a little stitious.

00:11:05.800 Because religious people, while we believe in metaphysical things and we have intuitions about 1.00

00:11:11.080 the world that go beyond the material world, we subject them to the rigor of logic. If you don't do

00:11:16.860 that, if you don't pursue, say, theology, which is faith-seeking understanding, you know, applying

00:11:22.960 logic and reason to it, then you're going to end up doing weird hippie voodoo stuff like rose petals 1.00

00:11:28.160 in a bath and blowing weird smoke out and engaging in all these superstitious rituals that pagan 0.99

00:11:32.960 religions have done since time immemorial. That's the real superstition. So they do this, 1.00

00:11:38.320 they've got all sorts of other people trying to perform these exorcisms, and they don't work.

00:11:43.740 Has all this hippie set up been ironic, and it's really going to return to the roots of this movie 0.66

00:11:48.420 and the faith and the meaning of a real exorcism? And the priest walks in. The priest says, okay,

00:11:53.640 I don't care that I didn't get the approval of my bishop. I'm going to go in and perform this

00:11:58.720 exorcism anyway. And it starts out pretty well.

00:12:01.540 God played a trick on you.

00:12:06.640 The priest dies, and now we got to wait for the witch doctor and all these other confused 1.00

00:12:10.440 people to try to do something. This was the moment I think I audibly said, oh, come on,

00:12:15.540 you know, give me a break. The first exorcist movie is about how Christ conquers the demons.

00:12:22.140 That the power of Christ compels you! The power of Christ compels you!

00:12:27.340 And in this, you have this explicit scene in which the demons conquer Christ,

00:12:32.380 which just renders the movie not believable. You might not be Christian. You might not believe 1.00

00:12:38.340 in Christianity. You might not even believe that God exists. The story presumes that God

00:12:44.720 exists. The story is about exorcism. The story specifically is about the Christian understanding

00:12:50.600 of exorcism. None of this makes any sense. Don't forget, we have holdover characters from

00:12:54.860 the first exorcist movie here. This is in that universe. So you've just completely destroyed the

00:12:59.580 entire universe of the movie and contradicted the religion that forms the basis of the movie

00:13:04.920 and reality itself. It's a total inversion of everything. The resolution of it. How do they

00:13:12.680 save any of the girls? They end up saving one of the girls by appealing to the girl's feelings

00:13:21.560 for her mother. I wanted to talk to mom. The thing that helps to bring her back is this scarf

00:13:28.120 that is from her mother. The deepest reading of this that one could have is that this is an appeal

00:13:34.560 to ancestor spirits. One of the most basic elements of every pagan cult that has ever existed in the

00:13:40.060 world. Ancestral possession, ancestral spirits that visit you after death. You would look to

00:13:44.740 ancestors. You would look to spirits for guidance. The fact that some of them could be malevolent

00:13:48.960 is extraordinarily common. An even shallower possibility, and I think one always has to

00:13:56.340 assume the most shallow possibility in a film this incoherent, is that a physical object, really

00:14:02.760 even devoid of spiritual import, just a thing that makes someone feel kind of good, is what brought

00:14:09.800 her back. A story really that's about the power of love in the face of spiritual obstacles, emotional

00:14:15.680 obstacles, all those things. Or that voodoo curse that could have started an interesting movie actually 0.99

00:14:20.840 turns out to be a protecting prayer. Once again, totally inverting the whole point of The Exorcist.

00:14:26.780 Making the demons the good guys, basically. Any of those reads on that resolution are pathetic 0.98

00:14:35.180 and totally devastating to the entire narrative of the movie. And then you get, then you get maybe

00:14:44.000 the worst part of the movie. You think that you've already, it couldn't possibly get any worse. If it got

00:14:48.320 any worse, it would become Southside with you. Amazing story, complex, intelligent, and charming.

00:14:54.240 This final monologue from the would-be nun turned nurse, turned not very successful exorcist minister 0.80

00:15:04.060 here, lady. Here's what she says it all means.

00:15:07.000 What do you think evil is? I'll tell you what I think it is. That we're born in this world with hope

00:15:13.040 and dreams and a desire to be happy. And the devil has one wish, make us give up.

00:15:21.440 And maybe that's all God, any God, or any good person really wants from us. Just to keep going.

00:15:30.420 Maybe that's all God. Any God. Or any good person. Or whatever you believe. I don't care.

00:15:38.260 Give me your money, you stupid, slapping seals. I don't know. We don't know. There's no meaning 1.00

00:15:43.020 in this film. It's just, ooh, spooky demons. Give me your money. What's it about? I don't know.

00:15:48.880 God, or like some pagans, or your family, or I don't know, whatever.

00:15:52.640 We pick up the story of Victor and his daughter Angela.

00:15:55.240 A man who's raising his daughter alone.

00:15:57.600 But there's also demons, by the way, which I know it seems kind of weird, but...

00:16:00.560 The film is dealing with the vulnerability of parenthood with a child that's dealing with possession.

00:16:04.980 There's not going to be any context or explanation for how demons are real.

00:16:09.440 Spirituality is a part of everything we do. Whether you believe or not believe,

00:16:14.480 there's something bigger than us.

00:16:16.140 This is truly a movie for our times. It's a movie where people adopt the heresy of indifferentism.

00:16:22.840 The belief that all religions are basically the same. Which we know cannot be the case because

00:16:26.760 religions make different and, in fact, contradictory claims. But we just, when we know that,

00:16:32.060 we all know that. We just don't want to think about it. Because that feels kind of judgy.

00:16:36.080 You know, it's kind of like judgy and exclusive. And you got to like pick between one thing or

00:16:39.560 another thing. I believe that's the way evil works, is to take you apart and to sow division.

00:16:44.100 Hey man, what's evil? You know what I think evil is? I'll tell you what evil is. Evil is the

00:16:47.800 privation of the good. There. Okay, we can move on now. Let's get into something more interesting.

00:16:52.600 What's a more interesting story? That in the beginning was the Word,

00:16:56.380 and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And then the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

00:17:03.620 He saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. And there was a war in heaven, and a third of the

00:17:08.380 angels rebelled and followed Satan down to the very pits of hell. And now the devil himself

00:17:14.460 prowls about the world seeking the ruin of souls. That's a line from one of the prayers that was

00:17:18.160 offhandedly mentioned in the movie before they completely undermined the prayer. And there are demons,

00:17:23.200 demons. But there are also angels. And there's also a church on earth with power over the demons.

00:17:29.620 And there's spiritual combat. And there's warfare. And it's specific. And it's detailed. And it's

00:17:34.440 interesting. And you can follow the plot, at least. Or, hey, mom, scarf, rose petals, woman,

00:17:47.200 hum-ma-shakalaka, hum-ma-ba-ba. Good. 1.00

00:18:01.500 What's more interesting to you? I think the former is a little more coherent. Something very,

00:18:07.720 very bad occurred to me. Something not very good occurred to me, which is that I spent hours of

00:18:13.000 my life. Precious hours that I will never get back in this fallen, temporal world, watching this

00:18:21.080 utter, unbearable tripe. See you next time.

The Michael Knowles Show - October 17, 2023

The Exorcist： Believer movie REACTION ｜ Michael Knowles

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