David Gordon Green Should Go Back to Dramas

The Big Picture

• David Gordon Green's early indie dramas, such as George Washington , showcased his groundbreaking and unique perspective on rural life in America.
• While Green found mainstream success with the comedy film Pineapple Express , his subsequent comedic efforts failed to capture the same personal touch as his earlier work.
• Green's recent involvement in horror sequels, like the Halloween trilogy, has been seen as a deviation from his original voice as an arthouse filmmaker, and he should consider returning to his indie roots.

There aren’t many filmmakers working today whose filmographies are quite as wild as David Gordon Green’s. After a series of critically acclaimed independent films in the early 21st century, Green made a breakthrough as a comedy director with 2008’s Pineapple Express. Green managed to retain his independent sensibilities to create idiosyncratic, absurdist comedy films that succeeded in reaching mainstream audiences, yet didn't devalue the unique sentiments he brought to the screen. While Pineapple Express became a beloved, permanent fixation of stoner culture, Green’s transition into the horror genre failed to capture the same unique perspective he had spotlighted in his early work.

Green's work on the 2018 Halloween failed to do anything new with the franchise. Even though the weakest installments in the series managed to take the Michael Myers story in an interesting new direction, Green's Halloween film did little more than subscribe to formula. Unfortunately, Green's subsequent work on the sequels Halloween Kills and Halloween Ends felt even less personal, and his attempted legacy sequel The Exorcist: Believer diminished the mythology of one of the greatest horror films of all time. It's a shame that a filmmaker whose sensibilities once ran counter-intuitive to Hollywood's mainstream has found himself recycling old properties with little insight. Now that Green has officially exited the director's chair for The Exorcist: Deceiver, the once-beloved arthouse filmmaker should consider returning to his roots and leaving the studio system behind him.

The Exorcist: Believer

When two girls disappear into the woods and return three days later with no memory of what happened to them, the father of one girl seeks out Chris MacNeil, who's been forever altered by what happened to her daughter fifty years ago.

David Gordon Green Peaked With His Indie Dramas

It’s hard to overstate how groundbreaking Green’s work was in the early 21st century. His 2000 directorial debut George Washington felt like the emergence of a completely new voice in mainstream American independent cinema. Set in rural North Carolina, the coming-of-age drama focused on the experiences of a young group of African-American children who grew up in a poor town rampant with poverty and tragedy. Although “slice of life” indie dramas had begun to emerge in the 1990s, George Washington felt both completely realistic to these childrens’ experiences and artistically satisfying as something more ethereal. George Washington managed to capture the same aura of mysticism as the films of Terrence Malick, but never at the cost of the film’s realism. While Malick’s films tend to be more religious in their visual poetry, George Washington examined hero worship through the story of a young boy who unexpectedly becomes the small town’s hero.

Green continued his study of rural life with his subsequent films All the Real Girls, Undertow, and Snow Angels. While they all focused on similar locations as George Washington, they didn’t suggest that Green was simply capitalizing off of the success of his first feature and replicating himself. All the Real Girls was a poetic study of adolescent love, Undertow was a gripping thriller, and Snow Angels was a more existential study of a collective group’s loss of innocence. Green was able to navigate work within multiple genres without ever sacrificing the perspective he was spotlighting; this side of the “American experience” simply wasn’t one that tended to pop up that often in mainstream films.

The Power of Christ Compels You to Finally End the Exorcist Franchise

Someone throw this horror series out the window, please!

Given Green’s continued success and his growing reputation as one of the most noteworthy auteurs of his generation, it made sense that he would be handed the reins to a major studio comedy featuring well-known stars. Although Seth Rogen and James Franco starred in many films together, Pineapple Express was easily the most successful. What’s ironic is that the two goofy stoners aren’t that dissimilar from the heroes in Green’s other films; they’re small-town “losers” who have been negated by the rest of society, and thus have the most to prove. Green had developed a way to shoehorn in his unique point-of-view within a studio film that also fit the requirements of a mainstream crowd-pleaser. Sadly, this streak wasn’t one that he would be able to keep up for that much longer.

David Gordon Green’s New Films Feel Less Personal

2011 saw Green delivering two misfires in a row with The Sitter and Your Highness. While every great director has a few bad apples within their filmography, it’s interesting to see why these two films failed. The Sitter may have focused on a similar underdog character (in this case Jonah Hill as the suspended college student Noah Scott Griffith), but had no empathy for him or his plight; Green’s empathy for the figures he was spotlighting had been consistent throughout his other work. Your Highness felt even less removed from his comfort zone. Any whimsical stoner humor that Green had attempted to insert within the medieval fantasy comedy was forgotten after a series of equally generic CGI monsters.

2013 allowed Green to rebound with two more films that felt closer in line to his early work, and unsurprisingly, they felt like a return to form. Prince Avalanche didn’t feature any of the exaggerated setpieces or random comedy bits that he had been forced to incorporate into Your Highness or The Sitter. In fact, the indie dramedy focused on absolutely nothing but a series of conversations between Texan roadside workers (Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch). It showed Green’s continued ability to create great dialogue and explored more of the existential themes that he had previously been spotlighting. Similarly, Joe abandoned the typical story formula to tell a grounded, realistic story about a small town worker who reflects upon his life’s failures. Not only was Joe a breakthrough film for Tye Sheridan, but it gave Nicolas Cage his best role in years.

While Green followed up this terrific double feature with the underwhelming Al Pacino drama Manglehorn and the generic political satire Our Brand Is Crisis, both films at least contained elements of the social commentary that has been so vital to his work. The same could not be said for his Halloween trilogy. It’s been sad to see such a quintessentially original voice focus his efforts on an underwhelming series of sequels that do nothing but replicate the style of John Carpenter. What’s particularly unfortunate is that the films themselves have kernels of good ideas. Halloween Kills’ analysis of mob mentality and revenge culture would have been a lot more interesting if the film didn’t have to incorporate the unnecessary rewriting of Carpenter’s 1978 classic and yet another return for Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode.

David Gordon Green Wasted His Talents on 'The Exorcist: Believer'

Exorcist: Believer was not a return to form for Green and didn't allow him to craft a satisfying continuation of the legacy of perhaps the greatest horror movie of all time. With its confusing ending, strange emphasis on nostalgia, and complete lack of substantial scares, The Exorcist: Believer felt like just another generic sequel intended to "modernize" timeless material; the film's underwhelming box office performance suggested that this approach is no longer a viable one. While it was going to be a challenge to live up to the legacy of William Friedkin's 1973 original, The Exorcist: Believer didn't seem to understand why the first film was so successful in the first place.

It feels like Green is yet another interesting indie director who has been forced into the studio system, so perhaps the news of him exiting the Exorcist franchise is a good thing. This is an era where Barry Jenkins is making a prequel to The Lion King, Chloe Zhao followed up her Oscar win with Eternals, and Ryan Coogler hasn’t made an indie film since 2013. Hopefully, Green’s unique voice will not become lost if he continues to experiment with genres outside his wheelhouse.

The Exorcist: Believer is available to watch on Peacock in the U.S.

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