The Exorcist: Believer Director David Gordon Green Wants His New Movie To Get Under Your Skin [Exclusive Interview]
This post contains spoilers for "The Exorcist: Believer."
If it wasn't for William Friedkin's masterpiece, "The Exorcist," modern horror as we know it today simply wouldn't exist. There are a handful of properties that horror fans view as sacred, and "The Exorcist" is certainly one of them. Then again, John Carpenter's "Halloween" exists on a similar pedestal, and director David Gordon Green not only created a legacyquel trilogy but managed to bring back final girl Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) to connect it to the first film. Now, Green is returning to the world of "The Exorcist," disregarding the canon of sequels and the prequel with "The Exorcist: Believer." The tale sees two young friends, Angela (Lidya Jewett) and Katherine (Olivia O'Neill), simultaneously possessed by demonic forces. Their families are of different backgrounds and faiths, but must now work together to try and save their girls. Single dad Victor Fielding (Leslie Odom Jr.) seeks out the assistance of Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn), the mother of Regan MacNeil (Linda Blair), who has since become a go-to voice on exorcisms.
Now, before anyone throws a fit about touching an "untouchable" property, lest we forget "Exorcist II: The Heretic," "The Exorcist III" (my personal favorite), "Exorcist: The Beginning," and "Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist" all exist. That said, Green is taking a big swing and doing something completely new with "The Exorcist: Believer." Jumping from one legacy property to another is no easy feat, and I was fortunate enough to interview him to learn more about his approach to the legendary material, expanding the theological exploration of possession stories, how making a possession film differs from a slasher, and what comes next.
Note: This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
'I didn't want it to just be fan service'
This film makes callbacks to the original "Exorcist," but you put your own spin on all of them, taking lines like "The power of Christ compels you," which at this point have kind of been parodied and memed to oblivion, and trying to make it scary again. Were there any other original "Exorcist" moments that you wish could have fit in the story?
I tried to not make it too clever, and so I wanted things that worked in terms of our narrative, but I didn't want it to just be fan service Easter eggs. I've done a lot of that in the "Halloween" movies, but it's a little bit more of a joyful popcorn movie in terms of the sub-genre of slasher as opposed to possession. And I was really trying to lean into the priority of this being, as Friedkin called it, a "theological thriller."
So I wanted to not make it something that would distract you or take you out of the movie. If you know the original film well and you see those nods, they're in there. The music is primal and powerful. Does that trigger something in all of us? And it is not dense with Easter eggs. In fact, the few that I'm even thinking of, I don't even know that an audience in a million years would ever notice, but were there for art department and some of our own kind of spiritual connection to working in the world of "The Exorcist."
'You're trying to make something that gets under your skin'
I like that you brought up the difference between something like a "Halloween" versus "The Exorcist," because the thing I hear all the time as a hardcore horror person is, "Oh, I'm not scared of Michael Myers, I'm not scared of ghosts ... but I don't mess with demons." So how does your approach to this film differ compared to "Halloween?"
Yeah, it's prioritizing character, the depth, and substance of our text. It was very researched. With this type of format, you're not trying to outdo the wildest kill you can imagine. You're not trying to engineer the most startling jump scare. You're trying to make something that gets under your skin. And if I've done my job right, then it's a movie that people will talk about afterwards. It's not just a thrill ride rollercoaster that you get off and have a laugh and grab a slice of pizza. It's something that you do have your own conversations and controversies and wake up the next day thinking "What if?"
I'm trying to make something that is distinctive, but also really relatable to a world that may or may not f*** with demons. They may relate to it in a way of mental illness or addiction or some of these things that we can see. And I'm actually inspired by a lot of the words in William Peter Blatty's original book, the novel, "The Exorcist," that aren't in the movie, but it's talking about possession and the other things, the little things. Things that we see every day, behavior that we see in people that we can't explain. So I want to make sure that the movie has enough of those intimate nuggets of possession so that it's not just head-spinning and levitation. It's got something a little bit more grounded to accompany that.
'Almost every religion has a ritual'
I loved the inclusion of the line from Chris MacNeil where she's like, "If you're asking me what I believe in, I believe in their pain. Is their pain not real?" It kind of doesn't matter what you believe in — if this person is suffering, they're suffering, whether it's demons, mental illness, or what have you. America's not quite as secular as it once was 50 years ago, and you included all of these different theological approaches to exorcism. Was that the approach from the beginning, or was that something that came about after you had already decided on making more "Exorcist" movies?
In doing our research, if you open up any doctrine, anything from Pentecostal to Wiccan to Rootwork to so many others ... I have a book, a diary of a Baptist exorcist, and things that I just didn't know were out there because of my lack of knowledge in that world of demonology and the world of ceremony and rituals [in] so many cultures. So I tried to take a handful of things that I can point to — can't do all of them, but almost every religion, like Chris says in this the movie, almost every religion has a ritual.
So I wanted to point to a few that I don't think had been acknowledged, in particular, Rootwork or Hoodoo culture. In the opening of the film, it's a real Voodoo priestess, a Haitian Voodoo priestess giving a real blessing of protection. And I wanted to bring a beauty and authenticity to some of the religious attributes of this that I think can be condescending in film or used in exploitative ways that I don't feel represent the intentions behind those rituals.
'We wanted it to feel like a real journey'
Horror has such a complicated history, specifically with Hoodoo or any of the Haitian religions. So it was really nice to see something presented authentically and not ... I know it's a classic, but "White Zombie."
Or "Serpent and the Rainbow." You watch that? Whoa. They went there.
Ohhh, yeah. They went there! Speaking of: The end of this film is very shocking. You really went there. Was there ever a version of this story where both girls got to live, or did it have to be this way?
Yeah, we shot it. We wrote it, we shot it. There are little moments even in some of the trailers that you'll see of a baptism that were from a version of the movie that we did. I'm a really, I don't know, spontaneous and playful, organic [director], taking the detours and inspirations that I found along the way, and something didn't feel honest about just a clean win. I won't go into the very ending of the movie, but there's a moment where I wanted real warmth, but I wanted to make sure that there was always a mark for the other one [the demon] on the scoreboard. We talked about everything. There are so many drafts that we did of this movie. We've been working on it for three years and it's evolved quite a bit, and in a way that we wanted it to feel like a real journey that we're taking with these young girls and their families.
And obviously, the incomparable Ellen Burstyn is in this movie. How do you not, yourself, projectile vomit with the gravity of her presence in your movie?
Oh, because she's just so warm and lovely. Having an icon like her, she's in three of my 10 favorite movies with "Alice Doesn't Live Anymore," "The Last Picture Show," and "The Exorcist." Getting her advice and wisdom, not just for this movie, but she sent me a book the other day that I'm in the middle of reading. It's an incredible [book] about a priest in the Arctic. And so there's just all these conversations that you can have with someone that's lived this life and taken the journey that she's had. And our character of Chris MacNeil that we're presenting in a lot of ways mirrors the journey that Ellen has taken since the success of "The Exorcist," where some people attribute the knowledge of spirituality to her. So she's met a lot of gurus and a lot of religious idols and icons — people that I would love to spend time with, and she gets to have these dinners with them and I'm like, "I need new friends, too. Bring me to those dinner parties."
'I couldn't do just a slate of horror movies if I didn't have [Righteous] Gemstones'
This one is a little silly, but this is another instance where you get to direct Jennifer Nettles as a devout, wonderful mother married to somebody who's arguably a little bit more reckless than she is. It's like she's playing a bizarro world version of Aimee-Leigh Gemstone. How does directing change between "The Righteous Gemstones" religion with her versus "The Exorcist" religion with her?
That's so funny, and I don't think I would have one without the other. I couldn't do just a slate of horror movies if I didn't have "Gemstones" to go and cleanse the soul a little bit with some laughs. And then meeting Jennifer and working with her on "Gemstones," really, she was in my mind the whole time. I wrote this with her in mind. And to be able to have her attributes because Aimee-Leigh is always so wonderful and precious and on a pedestal that I thought it'd be interesting to see her raise a little hell, too. And I wanted to see what it would be like if the s*** hit the fan. We engineered the Miranda character for her. And yeah, lovely working with her. I can't wait to — I should do a musical or something.
You had so many musical people in this movie! Leslie Odom Jr., Jennifer Nettles, Norbert Leo Butz!
Oh, it's a whole theatrical cast.
'I could see myself going to India and making a Bollywood musical one day'
This is also another legacy horror property. When are we going to get a David Gordon Green original horror, or even an original horror comedy?
Interesting, interesting that you say that. I've got such a slate of things that are realistic and ambitious and then other things that are just ridiculous and will never happen. I've got a sprinkling — and I'm joking about making a musical, but I'm also not. I could see myself going to India and making a Bollywood musical one day. And so there's always something. I'm trying to check a few boxes I've never checked, like a documentary. I like to be the new guy out looking for an education.
So there are ideas that me and McBride have been talking about since film school. Danny McBride, we did the story for this film together with Scott Teems and he's a common collaborator on "Gemstones." So we've got so many ideas and notebooks of things that we want to get to. Some are original ideas, some are the holy grail of horror like this is, and then some are just fun, playful stories that I think would be really fun to bring something fresh to the genre.
"The Exorcist: Believer" is now playing in theaters everywhere.