"I think the point is to make us despair. To see ourselves as... animal and ugly. To make us reject the possibility that God could love us."
The first teaser trailer for David Dordon Green's legacy sequel to The Exorcist screened last night during Universal's CinemaCon panel, and unlike the director's recent Halloween revival, this new instalment in the classic horror franchise has been given a subtitle.
The Exorcist: Believer.
The trailer wasn't released online, but it was said to go over pretty well with attendees. Reports indicate that it was suitably creepy stuff, with some reactions hailing it as one of the most genuinely terrifying teasers of all time (let's hope a version is officially released soon so we can find out for ourselves).
Leslie Odom Jr. plays the father of a young girl who goes missing in the woods with a friend. When both children wind up being possessed, he calls in Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn) for help.
The movie also stars Ann Dowd, Lidya Jewett, Raphael Sbarge, Jennifer Nettles and Olivia Marcum. A recent report claimed that Linda Blair would also reprise the role of Regan MacNeil, but that's yet to be confirmed.
Widely considered one of the scariest movies ever made, William Friedkin's The Exorcist focused on a possessed young girl (Blair) and her mother's (Burstyn) attempts to free her from the grip of the demon with the help of two priests (Jason Miller and Max Von Sydow).
Of course, the movie already has two sequels. The first, John Boorman's surreal The Heretic, was critically panned and actually had very little to do with the events of the first film. However, William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist III (based on his novel Legion) was a lot better, and served as a more direct follow-up to the 1973 classic.
About The Author:
Mark Cassidy is a writer, photographer, amateur filmmaker, and Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic from Dublin, Ireland.