Five years after it was launched, the Halloween legacyquel trilogy has come to an end. Director David Gordon Green successfully revived the slasher franchise in 2018 with his fantastic albeit simply named Halloween, and in the years that followed he delivered some extreme brutality and scares with both Halloween Kills and Halloween Ends. Now, Gordon Green is moving on to another legendary title within the horror genre, planning out a brand new legacyquel trilogy for The Exorcist, and the first ever look at the movie kicking off the exciting new run was debuted today at CinemaCon.
Universal Pictures held its big slate presentation this afternoon at the annual Las Vegas convention for theater owners, and not only was the official title of the next Exorcist movie revealed – The Exorcist: Believer – but those in attendance also got to see footage from the feature. The film stars Leslie Odom Jr. and Ellen Burstyn, who is reprising her role as Chris MacNeil from the terrifying original (for an awesome and surprising reason), and it appears that it is going to be a seriously scary fright fest.
The Exorcist: Believer CinemaCon footage began with an introduction to the franchise’s new protagonist, played by Leslie Odom Jr., who we meet as he drops his daughter Katherine (Lidya Jewett) off at school with her best friend Megan (Olivia Marcum). Sadly, it’s right after this that tragedy strikes, as it turns out that this is the last time that the girls are seen before they mysteriously go missing. A search begins trying to find them, and thankfully it’s a successful endeavor, but it’s really only the start of the main character’s problems.
At a hospital, Katherine and Megan are asked about where they’ve been, and the parents are troubled to learn that they think they’ve only been gone for a few hours when it’s actually been three days. They seem to have some kind of strange link between them – evidenced by how they stare at each other through the windows in their respective rooms, but they are deemed healthy enough to return home. As you could probably predict, however, this doesn’t instantly fix their behavior.
Examples of them acting odd escalates quickly, with Katherine staring at her father while he brushes his teeth, and Megan walks down the middle aisle of a church seemingly covered in blood and repeating, “The body and the blood.” Sufficiently freaked out, Leslie Odom Jr.’s character reaches out for help, and it’s with the assistance of a friend (Ann Dowd) that he is put in contact with Chris MacNeil, who has written a book about her experience with her own possessed daughter titled “A Mother’s Explanation.” He tells Chris that Katherine has been scratching the name “Regan” on to herself, and that they will need to use the exorcism rituals from many different cultures to fight what’s going on with the girls.
When Chris confronts Megan, she says that they’ve met before, to which the possessed young girl hisses, “Mother.” The girls progressively look more and more evil, and things get freaky with shots of dogs fighting, the whispered repeated words, “Drip, drop,” and the two girls getting hooked up to monitors that show that their hearts are beating in sync. And, as one would expect, the incredible theme music kicks in to only heighten all of the terror.
All in all, The Exorcist: Believer footage was impressive and scary, suggesting that horror fans should be in for a real treat when the demon Pazuzu returns to theaters this fall. It looks as though the movie is making good use of the franchise’s most memorable iconography while setting up a story that is unique and different from the original classic. Our fingers are crossed that it will end up being the same kind of treat that 2018’s Halloween is.
Based on a script by David Gordon Green and Peter Sattler, The Exorcist: Believer completed production earlier this year, and it is now just a few months away from release – set to hit theaters everywhere on October 13. You can keep track of all of the scary films that are on the way with our Upcoming Horror Movies guide, and learn about everything coming to the big screen and streaming in what remains of the year with our 2023 Movie Release Calendar. And stay tuned for more of CinemaBlend's coverage from on the ground at CinemaCon.
