New ‘Exorcist’ really bad

A new “Exorcist” flick must have seemed like a good idea three years ago, with a re-released director’s cut of the original having just pulled in almost $40 million.

If there was any life left in the satanic franchise, though, director Renny Harlin has snuffed it with “Exorcist: The Beginning,” a cinematic abomination that’s about as bad as you could possibly imagine a prequel to “The Exorcist” might be.

The story involves Father Merrin (Stellan Skarsgard), the priest of “The Exorcist,” as a younger man in his first encounter with Satan in Africa in the 1940s.

Three-fourths of the movie is boring as sin; the other quarter is loud, crude and awash in repugnant imagery. There are no true scares, only clatter, commotion, guts and gore served up as a vulgar shock to the system that, for all its excess, is not remotely shocking.

Harlin, whose clamorous and abrasive movies include “Driven” and “Deep Blue Sea,” tries to emulate William Friedkin’s grossly terrifying original, but all his images capture are the gross part: A bird pecking a man’s eye socket clean. Crows feasting on other crows’ innards. A stillborn baby emerging from its mother’s womb coated in maggots.

On top of those, he presents a Nazi officer shooting a girl in the head and a pack of hyenas ravenously tearing a screaming boy to pieces.

This is not horror. It’s sadism.

Someone please send for an exorcist to cast Harlin out of Hollywood.