Summary
- The Exorcist: Believer trailer promises to be a worthy sequel to the original, with terrifying scenes and unsettling jump scares.
- The trailer wisely avoids revealing explicit shocking moments, maintaining the suspense and intrigue surrounding the movie.
- The timing of The Exorcist: Believer couldn’t be better, as the horror genre is thriving at the box office and audiences are eager for a revival of the iconic franchise.
After 50 years of disappointing follow-ups to The Exorcist, The Exorcist: Believer looks like it could finally revive the classic horror franchise. It is hard to overstate the impact that The Exorcist had on horror cinema when it was released in 1973. An adaptation of author William Peter Blatty’s novel of the same name, The Exorcist was a slow-burn horror movie wherein a pair of priests attempted to save the soul of a young girl possessed by a demon. From its iconic score to its subliminal jump scares to its record-breaking box-office performance, The Exorcist pushed the parameters of what Hollywood horror movies could achieve.
Unfortunately, the movie didn’t spawn a string of equally solid follow-ups. While 1990’s underrated The Exorcist III ensured The Exorcist wasn’t a horror franchise with only one good movie, that serial killer thriller was a profoundly different beast from the original movie. Meanwhile, 1977’s infamously bad Exorcist II: The Heretic was so comically incompetent that it managed to make the terrifying original movie’s scares less effective in retrospect. Similarly, both 2004’s Exorcist: The Beginning and 2005’s Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist were too flawed to work, although the latter had a lot more interesting ideas than the former misfire.
The Exorcist: Believer Looks Like A Worthy Sequel To The Original
Previous Exorcist sequels were largely disappointing, but the new trailer for The Exorcist: Believer promises to correct this, given that the movie looks terrifying. There is a lot that The Exorcist’s reboot needs to get right if The Exorcist: Believer hopes to avoid the pitfalls that stymied the series so far. However, The Exorcist: Believer’s trailer gives viewers every reason to hope for the best. The iconic score is present but chopped into almost unrecognizable shocks of discordant noise throughout. The demon is as creepy as ever, plus the flashes of grinning, dead-eyed children take advantage of editing advancements to make the original movie’s jump scares even more unsettling.
The Exorcist: Believer trailer also wisely avoids showcasing any of the truly shocking moments that made the original movie infamous. Sights like a possessed Reagan self-harming with a crucifix or spinning her head 360 degrees weren’t given away by the original movie’s advertising, so The Exorcist: Believer trailer keeps any such explicit shocks hidden for now. Meanwhile, the fact that The Exorcist: Believer brings back Reagan’s mother even though Chris MacNeil wasn’t in earlier Exorcist sequels gives the enterprise a sense of legitimacy that is too often missing from revivals of horror franchises. Fortunately, this ensures The Exorcist: Believer doesn’t feel like another Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2022.
The Exorcist: Believer Is Happening At The Perfect Time
Horror is doing well at the box office and has been since 2021, so there couldn’t be a better time for The Exorcist: Believer to revive the franchise. The sequel is the first of a planned trilogy and, if the box-office success of director David Gordon Green’s recent Halloween trilogy is anything to go by, these three movies could prove seriously successful for Blumhouse. While The Exorcist: Believer is trying to revive one of horror’s less consistent franchises, the original movie’s cultural impact should ensure that audience will give the new movie a chance. Judging by The Exorcist: Believer trailer, the next Exorcist movie will be exactly what the franchise has truly needed for so long.
