What Should The Exorcist Do After Believer's Disappointments?
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Last week, David Gordon Green—director of 2023's The Exorcist: Believer, as well as the recent Halloween films—announced he was stepping down from directing the previously announced second film in the revival trilogy, The Exorcist: Deceiver. Today, we’re sorting through this demonic kerfluffle to see where the franchise has been so far... and where it could potentially go next.
Why isn’t David Gordon Green directing The Exorcist: Deceiver?
David Gordon Green and Jason Blum promoting The Exorcist: Believer at CinemaCon on April 26, 2023 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
The Exorcist: Deceiver, once due to release in April 2025, has been removed from Universal and Blumhouse’s release schedule while the studios search for a new director. According to Deadline, “Green is currently busy with the Ben Stiller movie Nutcrackers, as well as the fourth season of the HBO comedy series The Righteous Gemstones.”
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In July 2023, we learned the sequel to Believer would be called Deceiver, and that it was slated to arrive April 18, 2025. (As noted above, that’s no longer the case.) There’s no title or release window for any third film as of yet.
Why did Ellen Burstyn return to The Exorcist?
Fifty years after playing Chris MacNeil, the legendary actor was intrigued by the idea of what the character has been up to in the meantime. In Believer, we learn she wrote a book (A Mother’s Explanation: From Possession to Now) detailing her harrowing experiences in Georgetown; it was a best-seller, but it led to decades of estrangement with her daughter, Regan. Chris’ expertise in exorcism rituals across different faiths makes her a valuable resource for the main characters in Believer who’re dealing with their own demons—and in the movie’s final moments, she reunites with Regan (Linda Blair, returning to the series for the first time since 1977's The Exorcist II: The Heretic).
But beyond revisiting one of her most iconic characters, and the chance to work with Blair again, Burstyn had a very good reason for agreeing to do Believer: according to the Hollywood Reporter, it came down to cause that’s very close to her heart: the Actors Studio Drama School. “I’ve turned down many versions of The Exorcist 2. I’ve said no every time. This time they offered me a whole bunch of money and I still said no,” the Oscar winner told the trade. “And then they surprised me and they came back and said, ‘We doubled the offer.’ I said, ‘OK, let me think about this.’ I thought, ‘That’s a lot of money. Let me think about it.” The next thought that came to mind was: “I feel like the devil is asking my price.’ And the next thought that came to mind was, ‘My price is a scholarship program for talented students at our master’s degree program at Pace University. That’s my price.’ So I then went back and upped their up and ended up getting what I want. And I’ve got a scholarship program for young actors.”
What other Exorcist sequels are there?
The Exorcist TV series
Believer picks up the story of 1973's The Exorcist, ignoring the existence of John Boorman’s Exorcist II: The Heretic, which brought back Linda Blair as Regan and has somehow dodged much cult adulation—a miracle considering how completely wild and bonkers it is (read io9's retro review here). Exorcist director William Friedkin famously told the HuffPost that is was “one of the worst films I’ve ever seen ... I find it worse than terrible; I find it disgusting.”
On the other end of the spectrum, Believer also discounts the excellently eerie The Exorcist III, written and directed by Exorcist author William Peter Blatty (adapted from his 1983 Exorcist sequel, Legion; he’d previously won an Oscar for adapting his novel for the original film). It takes place in Georgetown and finds a way to bring back Jason Miller as the very much deceased Father Damien Karras, with George C. Scott stepping into the role of Lieutenant William F. Kinderman, another character from the 1973 original. It also contains maybe the most unforgettable jump scare scene in all of horror. (io9 also has a full retro review on part three.)
And, of course, there was the Exorcist TV show, created by Jeremy Slater (Moon Knight, The Umbrella Academy, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire). It ran for two seasons across 2016-2017 on Fox. The first season featured Geena Davis playing a character eventually revealed to be Regan MacNeil living under an assumed name; the second season brought season one’s priest duo (Ben Daniels, Alfonso Herrera) into a new spooky mystery. It was a really good, genuinely freaky show!
What about those dueling Exorcist prequels?
Here’s an example of wild, nonsensical Hollywood decision-making at its finest: 2004 saw the release of Renny Harlin’s Exorcist: The Beginning—then in 2005, we got Paul Schrader’s Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist. Schrader made his film first; studio execs deemed it not scary enough and brought in Harlin to create a new version. When The Beginning bombed, Dominion got a theatrical release and also bombed, though Schrader’s film got marginally better reviews. In both, Stellan Skarsgård plays a younger version of Father Merrin, the “old priest” in 1973's The Exorcist, battling evils both ancient (demons) and recent (Nazis) in the 1940s-set tales.
What went wrong with The Exorcist: Believer?
Those Hollywood execs from 20 years ago smelled trouble when their Exorcist prequel wasn’t scary enough, but apparently there wasn’t that kind of oversight on Believer, which had some disturbing imagery but zero frights. The film also had a surprisingly predictable story despite being assembled from a carefully crafted list of “stuff The Exorcist movies haven’t done before,” including giving us a pair of girls possessed in tandem, and the idea that people of diverse religions should work together as a team to maximize their chances of chasing demons away.
That came at the expense of making the Catholic priest character forgettable and useless (unless being “the character whose head spins around” counts as useful), when the best entries in the franchise have all examined how performing exorcisms and dealing with dark forces in general makes priests re-examine their own faiths in fascinating ways.
Believer had a great cast—Leslie Odom Jr. and Ann Dowd especially, though Norbert Leo Butz as a bitchy evangelical who has no idea how to deal with his tween daughter (even before she’s possessed) is also notable. It was great to see Burstyn reprising Chris MacNeil... it wasn’t so great that her eyes got stabbed out early on, meaning she spent most of the movie psychically reacting to events by writhing blindfolded in her hospital bed. She’s a beloved legacy character, and she came back 50 years later for that?
How can The Exorcist franchise get back on the right track? Scrap the trilogy.
The Exorcist: Believer
Scrap the trilogy idea. Believer (co-scripted by Green and Peter Sattler, from a story by Green, Scott Teems, and Danny McBride) was such a dud that even the built-in power of The Exorcist name makes Deceiver an iffy proposition, no matter who’s brought in to direct, and no matter how many times “Tubular Bells” does dramatic heavy lifting via the soundtrack. In the case of the Halloween trilogy, that 2018 first film was great—remember how excited we all were?—with sharply diminishing returns in parts two and three. Believer was so many rungs below 2018's Halloween to start with, why bother following the same pattern and potentially making things even worse?
How can The Exorcist franchise get back on the right track? Make things standalone.
Linda Blair in The Exorcist
Speaking of scrapping trilogies, Universal should take a cue from its own Universal Monsters revival and focus on standalone Exorcist stories. Yes, it was cool to see Chris and Regan after all these years, but their scene together in Believer felt like closure, and Believer’s less-compelling parent-child duo of Victor (Odom) and Angela (Lidya Jewett) also wrapped up their story pretty completely too. While nothing is known about Deceiver’s plot—maybe it’s already planned as a standalone? Maybe it focuses on other characters from the original film? Maybe it’s another crack at a prequel? Maybe it’s a Linda Blair showcase?—it would make sense for the studios involved to protect their $400 million investment by hiring someone not part of the Green team to write a fresh script.
How can The Exorcist franchise get back on the right track? Actually be scary!
For the love of Pazuzu, BE SCARY. The original film is still thought of by many fans as the scariest movie of all time. It changed the horror genre forever and is still highly influential, five decades later. That Believer failed to produce even one shriek-worthy moment is gut-wrenching in all the wrong ways.
What recent possession movies should horror fans watch instead of The Exorcist: Believer?
Argentine import When Evil Lurks came out the very same day as The Exorcist: Believer, and is as daring, shocking, mean-spirited, scary, and creatively vibrant in all the ways Believer isn’t. It’s now streaming on Shudder. Another 2023 release, Talk to Me, is similar to Believer in that it begins as a story about teens who invite the occult into their lives... and very quickly regret it. From there, though, the energy coming through is one of terrifying unease, and you absolutely won’t guess the fates of the characters like you probably did with Believer. You can rent it on Prime Video.
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