The Exorcist: Believer Trailer: Blumhouse And David Gordon Green Revive A Horror Classic
David Gordon Green's "Halloween" trilogy proved to be one of the wildest swings to emerge from our current era of legacy sequels and revivals, sporting questionable lines of dialogue ("Evil dies tonight!") and a narratively suspect yet fascinating finale. In light of this, it's hard not to be intrigued (if also apprehensive) as to what the filmmaker has cooked up with his latest sequel to a landmark work of horror — "The Exorcist: Believer."
Much like Green and producer Jason Blum's "Halloween" movies, "Believer" hopes to rejuvenate a flailing horror franchise that has gone in some rather bizarre directions since the '70s classic that started it all. The only difference? This time, Green isn't wiping the slate clean by removing the previous installments from the canon, the sequels and prequel (prequels?) alike. "I like all the 'Exorcist' movies," Green told Total Film in May 2022, adding that they "all fall into the acceptable mythology" for his requel. That's right, all the stuff about locusts in John Boorman's exceedingly eccentric "Exorcist II: The Heretic" is still canonical, baby!
While there's no sign of "Heretic"-esque ESP-related mayhem (yet), "Believer" changes up the general "Exorcist" formula by focusing on a story concerning not one but two cases of demonic possession. For more on that, take a gander at the film's trailer below.
Watch the trailer for The Exorcist: Believer
"The Exorcist: Believer" casts "Hamilton" veteran Leslie Odom Jr. as a father whose daughter (Lidya Jewett) and her friend (Olivia Marcum) are beseiged by the forces of Pazuzu. Desperate for help, he turns to someone who's encountered this particular demonic entity before — Chris MacNeil, with Ellen Burstyn reprising her famous role from William Friedkin's "The Exorcist."
The whole setup has more than a whiff of David Gordon Green's "Halloween," with Chris set to follow Laurie Strode in becoming the next milestone horror heroine forced to confront their longstanding Trauma with a capital "T." Judging by the "Believer" footage shown at this year's CinemaCon, the film won't be holding back on the grisly bloodshed either, much like Green's take on The Shape.
In addition to directing, Green co-wrote the "Believer" screenplay and story with Peter Sattler ("Camp X-Ray") and his "Halloween" trilogy scribes Danny McBride and Scott Teems, with the likes of Ann Dowd, Jennifer Nettles, Okwui Okpokwasili, and Raphael Sbarge rounding out the movie's cast. The ambition here is to launch a brand-new "Exorcist" film trilogy, with Jason Blum declaring it his and Blumhouse's "riskiest" movie to date in terms of the cost and expectations.
Can Blum and Green deliver the goods? We shall see how they handle the pressure when "The Exorcist: Believer" begins haunting theaters on October 13, 2023 — just in time to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Friedkin's spider-walking, head-spinning, pea soup-spitting original.