YMMV / The Exorcist: Believer

• Esoteric Happy Ending: Arguably downplayed in that the ending tries to be on the lighter side of bittersweet but still applicable in that the attempt at a somewhat uplifting ending and the reaction of the characters "moving on" can be very jarring in context of Katherine not only dying but being actively tortured in Hell. It's at its most obnoxious when Angela looks at Katherine's school seat and then smiles hopefully for herself, when Katherine's fate really makes the ending an almost straight Downer Ending and should leave the tone/characters (especially her family) far more melancholy. It is as though the film itself does not really understand the difference between death without an afterlife and someone's soul still existing in a version of Hell.
• I Knew It!: Prior to the film's release a number of fans had theorized that the demon possessing the girls would be Lamashtu, a demon of Mesopotamian Mythology, like Pazuzu from the first movie, and Pazuzu's nemesis.
• Like You Would Really Do It: Two girls are possessed in the film: a) the only daughter of the protagonist, whose POV the movie has been following almost the entire time and b) a girl with two other siblings, whose family life, personality and character is hardly explored. So the fact that Angela survives and Katherine doesn’t isn’t really the surprise the movie tries to make it out to be.
• Narm: The line from the returned Chris about her being barred from Regan's exorcism because of the "little patriarchy" of the two priests feels ill-judged at best and utterly ludicrous at worst, shoehorning a contemporary buzzword in with little consideration; it's also utterly insulting to the two men who gave their lives (worse in the case of Father Karras) to save her child.
  • This line is made even funnier in hindsight after the scene where she gets her eyes gouged out by one of the possessed girls, demonstrating a clear reason as to why she wasn't allowed to participate in the exorcism.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The possessed Katherine brutally gouging out Chris's eyes with a cross.
  • When Father Maddox attempts to exorcise the girls, Lamashtu makes their heads spin like Pazuzu did with Regan, only now the same starts happening to Maddox. His head goes 180 degrees before he falls dead.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • After Ellen Burstyn finally agreed to reprise her role as Chris MacNeil, all it amounts to is her eyes getting gouged out and out of commission. What is worse is that it could have been established that Chris had previously encountered Lamashtu during her attempt to reconnect with Regan, and since Lamashtu intimidates women during childbirth or kidnaps children according to the Mesopotamian myths, that would have made Chris more determined to step in.
  • The handling of her character also oddly leans into It's the Same, Now It Sucks! as it can feel like the creators merely sellotaped elements of their Laurie Strode characterisation onto Chris rather than giving real consideration to her role, namely the fact that she's alienated her daughter since the events of the original film and presenting her as an equivalent to the priests (mirroring Laurie Strode's becoming equivalent to Dr. Loomis in Halloween). It just feels incredibly unlikely that a woman who went through all that to save Regan would even consider risking their bond.

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