Leslie Odom Jr. wears a very long, cozy-looking, possibly cashmere bathrobe in a couple scenes of "The Exorcist: Believer" and I was really bummed we're not allowed to use our phones during advance screenings because I wanted to Google-image that robe so I could — wait, what was I talking about?

It is not a good sign when you attend a supposedly frightening movie such as "Believer" and you find yourself thinking about robes. Or about how pretty the window over the bathtub is in the house Odom lives in. Or about the name of that actor who plays Odom's neighbor, whose face is familiar but not from other movies (that's because she's Jennifer Nettles, best known as a member of country band Sugarland). Or about why, in all of these movies, somebody doesn't think to toss the poor demon child a tube of ChapStick.

Director David Gordon Green resuscitated the "Halloween" franchise (and Jamie Lee Curtis' non-yogurt career) but fails to do the same with "Exorcist," which is occasionally compelling, frequently gross and never even a little bit scary.

Odom plays a single dad whose daughter (Lidya Jewett) disappears for three days, along with her classmate. When they return, it's quickly apparent that something's up and by "something" I mean that the devil has possessed them. All of that works mildly well because we're hoping we're headed for some of the spooky shenanigans that worked so well in the first "Exorcist" 50 years ago. It helps that the movie gets a reminder at about the 40-minute mark with an appearance by original "Exorcist" star Ellen Burstyn, whose performance is authoritative and whose character we have a handle on already (unlike any of the new characters).

I'm always pleased to see Ann Dowd, too. The veteran character actor, who rose to fame in "The Handmaid's Tale," plays a nurse who has a history with the Roman Catholic Church. Catholics, incidentally, are joined by Evangelical Christians and voodoo practitioners for "Believer," which seems to believe that, absent scares, the best tactic is to throw a bunch of stuff at the devil and hope some of it sticks.

For most of the running time of "Believer," I was trying to figure out why (other than money) it was made. There's no compelling narrative reason until the final scene, which is genuinely affecting, although it has nothing to do with the main characters.

Unfortunately, the ending also gets preachy, piling on lessons about selfishness and faith — which, again, are not what anyone is going to an "Exorcist" movie in search of.

The Exorcist: Believer

1½ stars out of 4

Rated: R for language and violence.

Where: In theaters.