Many of us grew up watching movies that someone older showed to us. For me, my neighbors were a few years older than I was, and when they were around 10 or 11, they thought it’d be nice to show a 6-year-old The Exorcist. What it did was instill in me a lifelong fear of demons, so when I saw the trailer for The Exorcist: Believer, I knew that an entirely new generation was going to be lost in the fear of going to sleep.
Maybe you are like me and, as a child, thought you could sleep on the floor and get away with avoiding a demon, or maybe you came to the terror of The Exorcist as an adult, but no fear has really come close to that original movie. There have been sequels before, but this new trilogy, which includes The Exorcist: Believer, The Exorcist: Deceiver, and an unnamed third film, is a direct sequel to the original film, meaning that, sorry, Exorcist II: The Heretic doesn’t really play into this. Or maybe it will! We don’t know, but it seems like The Exorcist: Believer is going to explore more than just this new story. From director David Gordon Green (who recently revitalized the Halloween franchise with a new trilogy), this is the first time we’re diving in with some familiar faces from the original The Exorcist.
The synopsis is as follows: “Since the death of his pregnant wife in a Haitian earthquake 12 years ago, Victor Fielding (Leslie Odom, Jr) has raised their daughter, Angela (Lidya Jewett) on his own. But when Angela and her friend Katherine (Olivia Marcum), disappear in the woods, only to return three days later with no memory of what happened to them, it unleashes a chain of events that will force Victor to confront the nadir of evil and, in his terror and desperation, seek out the only person alive who has witnessed anything like it before: Chris MacNeil.”
Yes, Ellen Burstyn is back as Chris MacNeil, which makes this … terrifying.
The scariest movie still
Chris MacNeil was the mother of Regan (Linda Blair) and had firsthand experience with possession in the original movie. Our guide into the horror of Regan’s possession was her mother, and Burstyn hadn’t been back to the franchise since, despite multiple sequels and retellings. So having her back, for me at least, makes it that much more frightening.
For me, the horror and fear that comes with The Exorcist comes from the history of exorcisms in the world. Whether you are religious or not, people’s real-world belief in possession has always made things like The Exorcist that much scarier to me. Again, it’s probably rooted in watching this as a child. As much as I do love the occult, I have been wary of Ouija boards because of The Exorcist, and it didn’t really click how much I was still afraid of this franchise until I saw the trailer for The Exorcist: Believer. Now, I know that an entirely different generation is going to have that fear for themselves.
I don’t think kids who are 6 should run to the cinema, but I do think that this is a new terrifying look into this story and makes me excited for what is to come. Maybe just leave out heads turning around or kids saying what a priest’s mother does in hell, though. That’s good enough left in one movie.
(featured image: Green/Epstein Productions)
