The Exorcist: Believer | 2023 | R | – 4.7.5

Why is “The Exorcist: Believer” rated R? The MPAA rating has been assigned for “some violent content, disturbing images, language and sexual references.” The Kids-In-Mind.com evaluation includes many scenes of teens implied to be possessed by a demon and saying and doing shocking things including violent acts that leave people dead from a broken neck and injured with bloody wounds, several scenes of rituals being performed to rid two teen girls of demons, gynecologic exams and discussions of sexual assault, references to abortion, a few sexually suggestive remarks and gestures, many arguments and yelling, and at least 3 F-words and other strong language. Read our parents’ guide below for details on sexual content, violence & strong language.

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Two teenagers (Lidya Jewett and Olivia O’Neill) disappear and are found three days later huddled in a barn 30 miles from their homes. When they display extreme behaviors that a medical team cannot explain, their families call for help from someone that has had similar experiences. Also with Ellen Burstyn, Jennifer Nettles, Leslie Odom Jr., Ann Dowd and Raphael Sbarge. Directed by David Gordon Green. [Running Time: 1:51]

The Exorcist: Believer SEX/NUDITY 4

 – A husband and his wife kiss tenderly in a couple of scenes.
► A man talks to two homeless men about his missing daughter and one man makes sexually suggestive remarks and hand gestures (please see the Violence/Gore category for more details). A woman discusses becoming pregnant and having an abortion.
► Blood soaks through the covers across a teen girl’s hips. Two teen girls undergo gynecologic exams to rule out sexual assault (we see their feet going into stirrups). A married woman is shown to be pregnant.

The Exorcist: Believer VIOLENCE/GORE 7

 – A priest prays over two teen girls, he begins to choke, and his head twists unnaturally all the way around as we hear cracking and squishing and he falls dead. A woman follows a teen girl to a room, where the girl thrashes on her bed and repeats unsettling questions: a crucifix falls from a wall and the child uses it to stab the woman in the eyes (we see blood pouring from the wounds and she is later bandaged in a hospital).
► A man goes into a bathroom to check on his teen daughter and finds the tub filled with water that looks dark and there’s what looks like drops of blood on the edge of the tub; the teen is not there and he searches the house for her until she sneaks up behind him, slams his head against a metal bed frame, and then she falls to the floor having a seizure, thrashing wildly. Two teen girls yell with deep gravelly voices, their faces change and their skin tones turn ashen with their eyes oddly colored and scabs appearing on their skin; they are each strapped into chairs and hospital beds in several scenes and injected with sedatives. A teen girl is examined and we see her fingernails and toenails missing, or bent back unnaturally, and with deep cut marks on her leg.
► A teen girl leaves a church service and her father finds a room with robes splashed with sacrament wine and other items spilled all around the room; the teen walks along the center aisle of the church repeating, “The body and the blood” maniacally and screams as her parents try to stop her. A teen girl lies in a bed and the bedclothes stretched across her hips become stained with blood. A teen girl is shown with an inverted cross carved on her forehead. A teen girl head-butts a man and he is thrown across the room; she lifts out of her chair, floats off the floor, spins around and the ceiling begins to crack and seems to be swirling with blood as it gushes out of her mouth. Two teen girls’ heart monitors flatline and one is shown in a different place being pulled underwater by many malformed and decaying hands as we see medical personnel applying cardiac paddles and shocking her (it is implied that she is dead).
► A woman in bed in a hotel room hears noises coming from the building, the floor shakes violently and we understand that there is an earthquake; people run through the building and stairwell as the structure crumbles and we see the woman pinned under rubble later. Two teen girls are strapped into chairs in a room where rituals are performed presumably to extract evil spirits from them; people enter the room and complain of the smell, we hear heart monitors beeping in tandem and the girls open their eyes and growl deeply, one teen drools blood, one spits blood in a woman’s face, a woman recites something and pours liquid over the girls, causing them to spit out chunks of tissue and blood and an orange-colored gas is emitted from their mouths. A teen girl thrashes as two men strap her into a wheelchair. Lights in a bathroom turn off and on as a man brushes his teeth; his teen daughter appears as the lights click back on and later they seem to be turning off and on unaided. A teen girl sees an ashen faced person in her room and she tells her father to leave her alone. A woman holds a crucifix and repeats phrases, the crucifix glows red-hot and the woman drops it on the floor.
► Cars smash together as the ground under them and buildings around them crumble during a violent earthquake. Two men and a woman search a forest for their teen daughters; one man moves a rock and is startled by a slithering snake before finding a shoe that belongs to his daughter and the woman finds a backpack that belongs to her daughter. A man talks to two homeless men about his missing daughter and one man makes sexually suggestive remarks and hand gestures causing the first man to overturn the table where they are sitting.
► Two teen girls walk alone into woods and hold a charm while calling out to “spirits,” hoping for one girl to be able to speak to her deceased mother. Two large dogs fight on a beach biting and snarling (we do not see injuries or blood). A couple of scenes show people transforming to grey-tinged figures accompanied by deep gravelly voices. A man looks at photographs and sees distorted facial features. A horse is shown lying in a field and it is implied that it is dead; a teen boy runs to a barn to retrieve something and finds two teen girls huddled in a stall. A man flips breaker switches and is burned by sparks (we see him with a bandage on his hand).
► A teen girl scratches a name on a wall using her fingernail. A man yells at police officers for not finding his missing daughter and kicks over a garbage can in the station. A man goes home to find people in his missing teen daughter’s room chanting prayers around the room and he yells for them to leave. A teen girl angrily slams her hand on an observation window in a hospital. Police scent dogs search woods trying to find two teen girls. A teen girl runs through her house and her father chases her, she hides, he sneaks up behind her, startles her and they laugh. A woman accompanies a young boy to a room where a woman chants and performs a blessing for the woman’s unborn child.
► Two teen girls repeat for adults in the room to make a choice, “One girl lives and one girl dies.” A teen girl tells her mother, “I don’t want to die.” A deep growling voice emitting from a teen girl mocks a woman for having been pregnant and terminating the pregnancy. A man is told that he will have to choose between the life of his wife and that of his unborn child after his wife is injured in an earthquake. A woman relates having wanted to become a nun but before she took her vows, she became pregnant and had an abortion. People talk about a homeless camp in the woods and worry that unhoused people may have harmed two teen girls. A teen girl yells at her mother saying, “You’re embarrassing me,” when she drops her off at school. A man tells another man that he is not into people “speaking in tongues” when the man invites him to a church event. A woman complains to a neighbor about him leaving his garbage cans out at the curb. People argue about their children being possessed by demons. A man describes having to put his teen daughter in a mental institution. A man says, “God is punishing us.” A teen girl complains to her father about him eating sausage and she says, “Poor little piggies.”
► A man wakes his teen daughter and sees that she has wet her bed; he takes her to the bathroom and changes the bedclothes. Two teen girls are evaluated in a hospital with swabs of their mouths and vaginal exams, without evidence of sexual assault (we see their feet going into stirrups). A nurse removes a needle and IV from a teen girl’s arm.

The Exorcist: Believer LANGUAGE 5

 – About 3 F-words, 1 anatomical term, 6 mild obscenities, name-calling (freaked out, demons, devils, insane, bums, crazy, skeptic), exclamations (oh my gosh, shut-up, shocking), 11 religious exclamations (e.g. oh my God, God loves you, unholy spirit, reprobate, dragon, God is punishing us, oh thank God, God played a trick on you, Jesus, I am no devil, please God, you don’t believe in God, the body and the blood [repeated maniacally], in Jesus’ name). | profanity glossary |

The Exorcist: Believer SUBSTANCE USE

 – Two teen girls are given injections to sedate them, and two teen girls are shown with IVs in a hospital. People drink wine during a ceremony in a church, a man and a woman drink glasses of whiskey, and a woman drinks a glass of liquor.

The Exorcist: Believer DISCUSSION TOPICS

 – Demonic possession, exorcism, mental illness, death of loved ones, faith, tyranny, salvation, the supernatural, traditional beliefs, patriarchy, rituals, myths, amnesia, homelessness, Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven.”

The Exorcist: Believer MESSAGE

 – Sometimes to go forward, you have to go back.