When William Friedkin created his terrifying masterpiece, “The Exorcist,” audiences all across America praised the film for its innovative body horror and convincing performances. Hundreds of thousands of thrill-seeking viewers cowered in fear as Regan MacNeil contorted and rotted away on the silver screen.

This is the reputation David Gordon Green set out to uphold in his reboot, “The Exorcist: Believer.” This time around, Gordon Green changed a few things up for a fresher audience.

It’s the classic possession story, this time with a twist. Instead of the classic one-girl show, there’s double the possession to go around. Lovable father Victor Fielding (Leslie Odom Jr.) is separated from his daughter, Angela (Lidya Jewett), after her and a friend, Katherine (Olivia O’Neill), decide to adventure into the woods and conduct a seance. The girls disappear for three days before they turn up again, both seeming sickly and acting odd upon their return. In classic “Exorcist” fashion, the girls continue to wreak havoc in gruesome and violent ways for the rest of the one hour 51 minute duration.

The formula is tried and tested — and still serviceable. The issue arises when the audience is sitting in the theater for 40 minutes without one true scare. It takes double the time to set up scenes that should have happened in the first 15 minutes. The actual exorcism sequence? You’re going to have to wait an hour and 20 minutes to get to that one.

Herein lies the crux of the film’s problems. The dialogue is serviceable, the story is palatable and the acting is surprisingly strong, but the pacing of the movie is brutal. When the only thing the writing team changes is “let’s make more possessions,” all other aspects of the movie suffer from being extremely underdeveloped and half-baked.

Before getting to witness the real horror part of this horror movie, the audience is dragged through a complete hour of lame jumpscares and utterly boring family drama. The film falls completely flat when paired with its predecessor’s creativity and ingenuity. There is nothing akin to Regan’s heart-wrenching spider walk, there is no iconic “the power of Christ compels you!” — the only thing the power of Christ will compel you to do is fall asleep during this snooze fest.

Before discussing what this movie actually does right, the scare factor must be addressed. There is gore — though gratuitous — in some moments, and when it’s there, it’s actually done pretty well. Shocking, violent acts are accompanied by real moments of terror that are used sparingly throughout the runtime. Exactly how it should be — if it weren’t for the fact that beyond the aforementioned gore, the movie is just not that scary.

There are multiple jump-cuts where the audience is quickly shown a scary-looking face for a second before snapping back to reality. It’s a weird, lazy, bleh of a fright. Other times, the climax of a scene is just a frail jumpscare with no foundation. It isn’t creepy, and it doesn’t actually make any real attempt at developing any human emotion from the audience besides triggering a fight or flight response for a fifth of a second. It’s one hour 51 minutes of the scary maze game.

The performances given by Odom Jr. and Jewett are the highlights of the movie. Victor is truly a lovable protagonist, carried by Odom Jr.’s charisma and chemistry with Jewett. Despite the movie’s shortcomings, it’s easy to root for the pair come the end of the duration. The ensemble cast all does a great job in making it feel real. Katherine’s mother and father, played by Jennifer Nettles and Norbert Leo Butz, play the roles of super frustrating secondary antagonists with great success. Ellen Burstyn reprises her role as Chris MacNeil, which is pretty cool for the five minutes of screen time she is allotted. Overall, if there’s one thing this film really excels in, it’s the acting and dialogue, especially for modern horror standards.

Unfortunately, the acting wasn’t enough to save this movie from the fiery depths of reboot purgatory that it should be expelled to. Why two possessions? Why stuff the movie with an unnecessary B-plot at the expense of real horror? It doesn’t make sense. The two possessions don’t end up adding anything substantive to the elements of the movie that could’ve really shined.

Gordon Green’s spin on the Exorcist universe is dull in so many different ways. The scariest thing about this horror movie is the outlook on the franchise’s next decade.

Rating: 2/5