Quick Links
- Why Is The Exorcist So Important?
- What Went Wrong With The Exorcist: Believer?
- Why Mike Flanagan’s Horror Successes Make Him A Great Fit For The Exorcist
Highlights
-
The Exorcist
is undoubtedly one of the greatest horror films ever made, but it’s struggled to establish a franchise. -
The Exorcist: Believer c
ame with high hopes but failed to spark at movie theaters before director David Gordon Green walked away from two proposed sequels. - Mike Flanagan’s horror successes and gift for adapting existing properties make him the perfect choice to revitalize
The Exorcist’s
fortunes.
In the Age of Exorcists, The Exorcist is in trouble. It seems like horror fans haven’t been able to move for Exorcism movies in recent years. To sum it up, Russell Crowe has clocked up two distinct exorcism-themed movies across 2023 and 2024. It looks like the demonically possessed sub-genre is going nowhere, but the original Exorcist franchise still can’t recapture its early power and popularity.
After The Exorcist: Believer failed to spark at movie theaters and director David Gordon Green withdrew from the two confirmed sequels, horror supremo Mike Flanagan is in line to pick up the reins and, presumably, a good dose of Holy Water. This is good news for horror fans: Flanagan has built an impressive filmography that proves he’s just the person to redeem one of the greatest legacies in horror.
Why Is The Exorcist So Important?
|
The Exorcist |
|
|---|---|
|
Written by |
William Peter Blatty |
|
Directed by |
William Friedkin |
|
Starring |
Ellen Burstyn, Max von Sydow, Lee J. Cobb, Kitty Winn, Jack MacGowran, Jason Miller, Linda Blair |
|
Release Date |
December 26, 1973 |
|
Rotten Tomatoes Score |
87% |
The Exorcist isn’t just one of the greatest horror films ever made, but one of the greatest Hollywood movies. The 1973 story of a young girl apparently possessed by a demon that causes her single mother to turn to the Catholic Church when science can’t help is far more than the sum of its parts.
The last thing The Exorcist is about is its iconic exorcism scene — it’s a film about faith and mistrust, hope and despair, and it doesn’t provide easy answers. Its themes are brilliantly captured through damaged and real characters, with credit given to the audience to read what they want into a film that, along with some still impressive make-up and effects, filming techniques, and Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells, crafted unique fear.
It’s no wonder its great success invented modern horror, banishing the classic and gothic horror that had dominated the genre for decades. It’s also no surprise that it remains a big draw for filmmakers, production companies, and studios like Universal, which paid $400 million for the rights to bring it back to the screen.
A considerable part of the original film’s success was the opposing forces of director Willian Friedkin and writer William Peter Blatty, whose differing perspectives on the faith at the film’s heart are viscerally represented on screen. Rumors of a curse on set (inspiring films like Russell Crowe’s forthcoming The Exorcism) didn’t hurt, but the curse has manifested most in the successive failure of sequels. In 2023, the fifth movie sequel, The Exorcist: Believer, showed that the curse still needs to be broken.
What Went Wrong With The Exorcist: Believer?
|
The Exorcist: Believer |
|
|---|---|
|
Written by |
David Gordon Green, Danny McBride, Peter Sattler, Scott Teems |
|
Directed by |
David Gordon Green |
|
Starring |
Leslie Odom Jr., Lidya Jewett, Olivia O’Neill, Jennifer Nettles, Norbert Leo Butz, Ann Dowd, Ellen Burstyn |
|
Release Date |
October 6, 2023 |
|
Rotten Tomatoes Score |
59% |
The Exorcist is a notoriously troubled franchise despite having clocked up six films and one TV series since the original was released in 1973. Hardly any of those movies were written as full sequels. Two (Exorcist: The Beginning and Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist) were effectively different cuts of the same movie. So, hopes were high when Blumhouse Productions announced a new trilogy continuation of The Exorcist in partnership with rights holders Universal Pictures.
It was even better when it was announced the talent behind Blumhouse’s refreshed Halloween trilogy was on board. Although Halloween Ends and Halloween Kills divided fans, 2018’s Halloween was a sharp update of a worn franchise that returned Michael Myers to an impressive box office haul. Director David Gordon Green was ready to revitalize another 1970s horror franchise with partner in crime Danny McBride, but lightning couldn’t strike twice.
The Exorcist: Believer tried to find a clear hook to bring the franchise up to date, like Halloween. This time, there wasn’t one young female victim, but two, and the obligatory exorcism broadened out from Catholicism to a multi-faith ritual. But the new take wasn’t as fresh or neat as Halloween‘s, with attempts to recapture or build on the 1973 original coming across as stale re-run. Incorporating multiple faiths depleted the spirituality central to the original film’s examination of good versus evil, with ambiguity downplayed and scares that didn’t impress.
Green knew building the horror through characters was vital, starting with an evocative opening in Haiti. Just as Jamie Lee Curtis had returned to Halloween’s Haddonfield, Green brought back original star Ellen Burstyn for essential continuity. But the character was poorly treated. With a surprise cameo in Believer’s closing scenes, the film couldn’t escape feeling like a poor tribute act in a large field of films about demonic possession.
The film’s $137 million global take was dwarfed by the money Universal put down for the rights, and it was considered a disappointment. Although the sequel Exorcist Deceiver had already been announced with a punchy release in April 2025, Green stepped away from directing in January 2024. The sequel was removed from the schedule awaiting a new director.
Why Mike Flanagan’s Horror Successes Make Him A Great Fit For The Exorcist
Over the past decade and a half, Mike Flanagan has established an impressive figure in horror across film and TV. His resume has all the attributes to reset The Exorcist and help it rise above all the other films in the subgenre.
Flanagan’s recent Netflix limited series, The Fall of the House Of Usher, was a deft reworking of the works of Edgar Allen Poe, fused with a study on family, capitalism, and society. But it was only the latest example of his gift to take on existing worlds and craft chilling character-led drama. He’d previously reworked the novels of Shirley Jackson and Henry James for the limited series The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor.
Midnight Mass, which Flanagan created, wrote, and directed for Netflix earned an 87% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It was an atmospheric drama, rooted in a community of characters and drawing the horror from Flanagan’s personal experience of Catholicism and study of other religions:
I found a lot of these various religions’ ideas to be inspiring and beautiful, but I also found their corruptions to be grotesque and unforgivable.
In feature films, Flanagan has shown he’s a brilliant adapter of Stephen King’s works. In 2017, he earned positive reviews for his movie of the previously thought unfilmable Gerald’s Game. Flanagan has recently completed filming of King’s novella The Life of Chuck, with Tom Hiddleston in the title role.
Between those movies, 2019’s Doctor Sleep showed that Flanagan not only has the ability to adapt with skill but also fuse two distinct influences to heal a rift in horror fandom — King’s source work and the 1980 movie adaptation of The Shining. For 40 years, King’s disapproval of Kubrick’s classic but unfaithful adaptation had fueled one of horror cinema’s great debates. Flanagan adapted King’s sequel book while brilliantly blending it into an astonishing reconstruction of Kubrick’s claustrophobic Overlook Hotel.
Perhaps the most important part of his horror filmography, which ranges from slasher to supernatural, is his horror work focused on supernatural possession — for Blumhouse Productions, no less. After Flanagan’s second feature, Oculus, featured a cursed mirror, 2016 saw the release of his Ouija: Origin of Evil, the period tale of a widow whose fake seance business invites a spirit to possess her youngest daughter. Critics responded well to the drama and horror rooted in a family dynamic.
The icing on the horror cake is having received praise from the director of The Exorcist himself, William Friedkin. The legendary filmmaker, who died in 2023 just before The Exorcist’s 50th anniversary, was full of praise for Flanagan’s 2016 slasher, Hush, earning a gushing reply from Flanagan on Twitter:
So grateful that you enjoyed it! You’re a hero of mine, it’s a real honor.
Flanagan is most famous for his character-led terror, but horror fans don’t need to worry that a Flanagan Exorcist film will lack frights. Flanagan’s 2022 Netflix series The Midnight Club holds the Guinness World Record for the most jump scares in a single episode of television. That’s 21 if you wanted to know, with Flanagan brilliantly confirming that this was a sarcastic response to studio notes requesting more jump scares.
The Exorcist was a vision of two men, Friedkin and Blatty, clashing as they built an ageless and chilling study of belief. As Flanagan has repeatedly shown, his experience in horror and knowledge of religion, along with the rare ability to combine multiple influences, is ready-made for one of horror’s most cherished titles. He’s a one-stop solution to redeem the franchise and the best chance for The Exorcist to return to full strength, if the power of Universal’s rights compels him.
Leave a Reply