The Exorcist: Believer looks like a hellish double feature in the first trailer
But Warner Bros.‘1973 adaptation of The Exorcist is an iconic piece of horror cinema, none of the studio’s later sequels have ever quite managed to make quite the splash. Only time will tell if that will also end up being the case with Universal and Blumhouse’s new trilogy of Exorcist feature films from director David Gordon Green, but the first trailer for The Exorcist: Believer really gives the impression that the revival cooks on gas.
Set in the same continuity as the original film, The Exorcist: Believer tells the story of how widower Victor Fielding (Leslie Odom Jr.) struggles to save the life of his young daughter Angela (Lidya Jewett) after she and her friend Katherine (Olivia Marcum) suddenly disappear one day only to reappear days later, apparently possessed by demonic entities.
Victor doesn’t need previous experience with the supernatural to say something is wrong with the girls after they both show up with little memory of where they’ve been, and Angela starts sneaking up behind him in the middle of the night to say some weird things. But when the girls begin to be overwhelmed with convulsions and start talking in wild, inhumanely resonant voices, part of Victor knows that his neighbor’s (Ann Dowd) advice to seek out someone who knows the goods is paying off.
As delightful as it is to hear snippets of “Tubular Bells” sprinkled throughout the trailer, it’s even better to see Ellen Burstyn return as the older, wiser Chris MacNeil, who remembers well what it took to drive a demon out of his own daughter. It’s interesting to see that BelieverThe story of will revolve around two possessions that have a sort of common thread and touch on spiritual practices outside of Catholicism that deal with demonic expulsion. But given the influence of the original Exorcist had on the horror genre and its possession-focused subset, The Exorcist: BelieverThe success of will likely hinge on its ability to truly unsettle and disturb audiences.
The Exorcist: Believer is set to hit theaters on October 13.
