What you need to know about the horror sequel The Exorcist Believer: Release Date, story, cast, reviews, and trailer, so keep viewing the horror sequel.
A controversial masterpiece directed by William Friedkin and based on William Peter Blatty’s 1971 book of the same name, it was the first film of its genre to be nominated for an Academy Award and has since become an iconic part of popular culture.
Fast forward to the present, when almost 50 years have passed since it originally terrified viewers with its terrible narrative and sickening set pieces.
Blumhouse and David Gordon Green are bringing back the horror series The Exorcist for a third time, but this time they’re making it a post-original threequel.
Released in time for Halloween, The Exorcist: Believer is the next installment in the terrifying series.
Audiences were driven to the edge of their seats in the 1973 classic The Exorcist as the filmmakers stretched the envelope to its absolute maximum.
What we now know about The Exorcist is as follows: So far, so good…
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The Exorcist: Believer release date
On Friday, October 6th, the first film of Green’s Exorcist trilogy opened in theaters throughout the United Kingdom.
Based on its “strong horror, violence, injury detail, and very strong language,” the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) has given the film a rating of 15.
So far, neither the second nor the third film’s release dates have been officially announced.
The Exorcist: Believer Reviews
Theaters are now showing The Exorcist: Believer. Is there anything about it that makes you want to watch it? Well, early reactions online suggest this story of a demon’s re-possession is less divine than it is horrible.
To begin, in our own assessment, reviewer Roxy Simons noted two main problems with the franchise’s newest sequel. “The issue is that the film isn’t all that exciting or very scary,” she said.
The Independent pointed out the obvious, stating the film “lives deep in the shadows of the late William Friedkin’s 1973 classic” but is just “a toned-down, more limply palatable iteration of Friedkin’s work.”
The Telegraph didn’t mince words either, saying flat out that it’s “not even slightly scary,” with The Guardian emerging equally unimpressed, suggesting “it’s serviceable,” and calling it “a silly, gloopy Halloween shocker that offers just about enough goofy entertainment for an undemanding fright night crowd.”
Read our full review round-up below:
Yahoo Movies UK: Horror sequel won’t possess your attention for long (3-min read)
The Telegraph: Even Satan seems asleep on the job in this desperate sequel (3-min read)
The Independent: Boring, self-serious and parched from a lack of scares (3-min read)
Total Film: “An Overcooked Valentine to a Horror Classic“ (2-min read)
The Guardian: Ellen Burstyn returns for schlocky sequel (4-min read)
The Exorcist: Believer’s release date
On October 6th, the first film in Green’s Exorcist trilogy will premiere in theaters throughout the United Kingdom.
The planned release date of Friday, October 13, was scrapped when Taylor Swift announced the premiere of the concert film for her Eras tour on the same day.
The BBFC has given the film a rating of 15 for “strong horror, violence, injury detail, and very strong language.” The film is 111 minutes long.
So far, neither the second nor the third film’s release dates have been officially announced.
Posters for the film have also been revealed, giving audiences a glimpse at the possession that occurs in it (similar to how Regan was shown in the original).
The Exorcist: Believer Director
Already having successfully resurrected another classic horror series with his Halloween films, David Gordon Green has been set to helm the first feature since December 2020.
Filming on the remake started at the end of last year, and it features the return of filmmaker David Gordon Green and Eastbound and Down star Danny McBride, who co-wrote Green’s Halloween movie.
The idea of yet another “remake” of such a significant movie may horrify some people, but Green has proven with his most recent Halloween movies that he can produce a respectable follow-up to a classic.
The new Exorcist movies, according to cinematographer Michael Simmonds, will feel very different from the ones made by Green and Company.
Each installment of Green’s Halloween trilogy paid homage to John Carpenter’s original 1978 slasher while also including elements from classic horror films and soap operas. This new Exorcist would be “more suspenseful, claustrophobic, and true to the original material,” Simmonds told SyFy.
Unlike Carpenter, however, who was engaged in composing the Halloween threequel, original Exorcist director Friedkin dismissed any suspicions that he would be working on the new sequels.
Talking to Yahoo about the revival, producer Jason Blum told us: “We’re going to surprise everyone with The Exorcist. I’m well aware that there are naysayers and some who believe we shouldn’t be stepping on such hallowed ground. I know I can show them how incorrect they are. We’ve got a great script here.
The Exorcist: Believer Trailer
In July 2023, the first promotional video for The Exorcist: Believer appeared online. We got our first peek at Ellen Burstyn as Chris MacNeil again, and the episode included the memorable refrain from Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells.
The second trailer is very similar to the first, but it goes even deeper into the turmoil that two young girls’ captivity has caused in the family.
The movie is scheduled to hearken back to known terrors in order to present an all-new horror narrative, and the original movie character Reegan (Linda Blair) is mentioned.
The Exorcist: Believer Cast
Ellen Burstyn, who portrayed Chris MacNeil’s anguished mother in the original, will reprise her role in Believer, revealing Green’s strategy. It would seem that Burstyn’s Chris is essential to the efforts of Leslie Odom Jr.’s (One Night in Miami) character to free his own kid from the clutches of a malicious spirit.
Ellen Burstyn, who portrayed Chris MacNeil’s anguished mother in the original, will reprise her role in Believer, revealing Green’s strategy. It would seem that Burstyn’s Chris is essential to the efforts of Leslie Odom Jr.’s (One Night in Miami) character to free his own kid from the clutches of a malicious spirit.
The CinemaCon audience saw a clip in which the possessed girls stared blankly into a mirror for long periods of time, and another scene in which Marcum’s character interrupted a church service and yelled “The body and the blood” to a priest in Pazuzu’s booming, demonic voice was particularly unsettling.
The Exorcist: Believer Plot
Green wants to pick up the story where the first movie left off, which is about a single parent who tries to keep their daughter Regan safe from two tired priests who are doing an exorcism.
Green also appears to embrace the many Exorcist spinoffs as legitimate, saying that “they can all fall into the acceptable mythology” for his project.
Green believes that the widely panned sequels to Friedkin’s magnum work, such as the two-season TV series that premiered in 2016, simply expand and improve upon his vision for the brand, despite the fact that his own Halloween ventures utterly ignore anything that followed the 1978 original.
An early teaser and some further narrative elements were shown to visitors to the CinemaCon conference in Las Vegas in April 2023.
According to the plot summary, “For the last 12 years, Victor Fielding (Tony winner and Oscar contender Leslie Odom, Jr.; One Night in Miami, Hamilton) has been single-handedly caring for his daughter, Angela (Lidya Jewett, Good Girls), after the loss of his pregnant wife in the Haitian earthquake.
However, when Angela and her friend Katherine (newcomer Olivia Marcum) vanish in the woods and reappear three days later with no recollection of their disappearance, it sets in motion a chain of events that will force Victor to face the depths of evil and, in his terror and desperation, seek out the only person alive who has witnessed anything like it before, Chris MacNeil.
