The Exorcist is one of the most frightening and powerful staples of the horror movie realm. It’s terrifying; it brings out the deepest, darkest fears that many viewers have, and it does it all in a way that makes you feel unsafe in your own skin. Horror movies that can provide that level of fear definitely leave a mark, and The Exorcist continues to do so, even after all this time.
William Friedkin’s 1973 film was the first of its kind and starred Ellen Burstyn, Max von Sydow, Lee J. Cobb, Kitty Winn, Jack MacGowran, Jason Miller, and Linda Blair. The Exorcist follows a 12-year-old girl, Regan, who becomes possessed and the fight her mother puts up to save her. It is another film that reaches into you and pulls out a primal fear. Parents would give anything to make life easy for their kids, and that’s not the case with The Exorcist.
Many exorcism films followed the 1973 movie, outside of the film franchise based upon The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty.
The Exorcism of Emily Rose, The Possession of Hannah Grace, The Cleansing Hour, and The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, to name a few, and a new one is on the way.
Blumhouse Productions is the latest company to release a film inspired by The Exorcist, and this one will be more closely tied to Friedkin’s 1973 version.
Blum had this to say about making a reboot of the film, honoring the original story, and taking the creative freedom to make their own:
What I hope to do with The Exorcist is the same thing we did with Halloween, you know. Halloween, the first movie was great, and the second movie was okay, and the rest of them were not very good. And then we came in and kind of re-jiggered it, and people liked it, so I hope we can do the same thing with The Exorcist. Everyone thinks we’re gonna fall on our face, but I think, we have the same filmmaker, the same writer, David Gordon Green and Danny McBride. And I think we’ll reinvent The Exorcist so that it’ll feel fresh, new, different, but, you know, related to the first movie, but also really, really scary.
The original film was terrifying, and most Blumhouse movies also leave you with that uneasy feeling, so we’re definitely excited to see what they do with the story.