The "Exorcist" Movie Industry and the Problem of Evil

Hollywood’s "Exorcist" industry is alive and well: The sixth film in a series begun in 1973 is out and available to stream today. The Exorcist: Believer is not a particularly good movie, but it resonates because it deals with a big question: Why is there evil in the world?

Hollywood is not usually considered a good stop for answers to deep questions. But pop culture has always played a major role in addressing enduring, troubling issues. In The Exorcist: Believer, audiences are asked to witness the basic horror of tortured, innocent children. It is unpleasant to watch, but since we know that bad things do happen in the real world, we are compelled to see travesties acted out and cathartically resolved onscreen.

Theodicy

Wrestling with the problem of evil has a long pedigree. A whole branch of theological thinking called “theodicy” seeks to resolve the question of evil in an ostensibly divinely ordered world. Philosophers from Plato to Voltaire to Hannah Arendt all struggled with evil, each deriving different explanatory formulations.

Mental science gives us another set of tools to deal with the problem of evil. Sigmund Freud suggested that humans actually desire their own, and others’, destruction. He called it “Thanatos,” and juxtaposed it with “Eros,” the contradictory drive toward love and sex. For Freud, to deny Thanatos is to be like those who “love fairytales.”

Carl Jung similarly posited that we all have a dark side. He termed it the “Shadow.” The Shadow is that inner darkness that we desperately seek to repress. But it does not go away. Rather, we unconsciously “project” it onto others, to justify the hatred we feel toward those whom we detest. Like Freud, Jung suggested that we ignore our darkness at our own peril.

Other psychiatric practitioners offer more pragmatic advice. Psychiatrist Grant Brenner has posted on Psychology Today that “everyday evil” can be summarized as fully human traits, categorized as “objectifying others, denying relatedness, numbing of one’s own inner experience and emotions, and impaired ability to self-reflect.” Countering these traits involves building empathy and cultivating “agreeableness.”

Most folks probably get their theodicy from pop culture. This is completely understandable. While the sciences are highly useful to understanding the problem of evil, we seem to have a need for more magical explanations. Movies like The Exorcist: Believer provide us with fairytales that we desire, telling us that “real” evil comes from outside of us. To defeat it, we must band together and cultivate the Good within.

The Exorcist: Believer tells the story of two tween girls who perform a ceremony to communicate with the deceased mother of one of them. Horrifically, they accidentally invite a demon, who possesses them both. As with most "Exorcist" films, we learn that psychiatry will not work—in this case, a dismal mental hospital is shown to be completely worthless. Furthermore, disbelief is no protection. The protagonist father says early on, “Something bad happens, must be the Devil, something good happens, must be God. It is a myth made up by people to explain things they will never understand.” He will learn that he is wrong.

In The Exorcist: Believer, the old tropes get some needed updates. The priest, Father Maddox, is aided by a Baptist pastor, a Pentecostal preacher, and a rootwork healer. The protagonist, played compellingly by Leslie Odom Jr., marks the first time an African American actor helms a movie in this series.

Embracing Empathy

Ultimately, the once-disbelieving father rescues his daughter, by learning from a past experience about being selfish. He chooses not to put the life of his child ahead of the life of the other girl. The other dad is not so wise, with disastrous results.

The Exorcist: Believer addresses the problem of evil in a standard Hollywood way. Evil is the monster out there, and it attacks good people for no good reason. But the film does some important work as well. It poses a solution to the problem in a manner consistent with current psychological insights. By embracing empathy, by not being selfish, the heroic father prevails over a demon.

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So, while bad things happen to the innocent in this film, the latest "Exorcist" offers a pathway out: Good can triumph when we cultivate, as Abraham Lincoln famously put it, the better angels of our nature. This is a worthwhile message in an otherwise unremarkable film.