Unpacking the new Exorcist trailer with director Mike Flanagan

When it was released in 1973, The Exorcist was a transformational piece of horror cinema. It became the first horror film to receive an Oscar nomination for best picture, and has been followed in the five decades since by no less than five film sequels, novels, a television series and even a radio serial.

The trailer for a seventh film in the franchise lands today, The Exorcist: Martyrs, written and directed by the godfather of modern horror Mike Flanagan, and starring Scarlett Johansson, Chiwetel Ejiofor, John Leguizamo and Laurence Fishburne. Whatever you do this morning, don’t watch it while you’re alone and eating your Froot Loops.

The film follows an NYPD cop, Detective Julie Miller (Johansson), who is investigating a series of murders connected to both her past, and the demonic entity which, back in 1973, threw Regan MacNeil (Linda Blair) around her bed like a green-puke spewing Raggedy Ann doll. Pazuzu is back? Talk about not taking a hint.

Once upon a time, the trailer was a mere advertisement for the film. An appetiser to the main course, maybe. But the 21st century, trailers get their own marketing campaign. And the 48-year-old Salem, Massachusetts-born filmmaker, best known for a slew of genre redefining horror masterpieces, including The Haunting of Hill House and Midnight Mass, acknowledges the trailer is a critical moment in the life of a film.

“Especially for a project like this, that is going to be met immediately upon announcement with scepticism and questions; being able to kind of show people the first real look at what the movie is, is a critical moment for our marketing,” he says. “Otherwise it’s just a series of unanswerable questions.”

Trailers have doubtless exploded in terms of their impact and import. But here’s the twist in the tale: Flanagan goes out of his way to avoid them. Why? Spoilers, of course. “I try so hard to go into every movie knowing as little about it as I possibly can, which works directly counter to what’s required to market a movie and get it in front of an audience, so I’m, I’m not the person to ask,” he says.

But how much to reveal, and how much to keep secret, remains the eternal question. Back in 1995, the trailer for the Bond film GoldenEye included scenes that confirmed Agent Alec Trevelyan (Sean Bean) did not die in the film’s prologue, and the trailer for Cast Away included scenes which revealed Chuck Noland (Tom Hanks) did, in the end, get off the deserted island.

“I’d prefer it reveal as little as possible,” Flanagan says. Plus, Flanagan says, “trailers have a responsibility not to mislead about the film, not to show scenes or a tone or present a movie that isn’t actually going to materialise on that screen when the ticket is purchased. That’s important to me.”

The Exorcist: Martyrs is the seventh film in the franchise. If you’ve lived through them all, newsflash: you are no spring chicken. The first, The Exorcist, follows the demonic possession of a 12-year-old girl and the struggle by her mother, aided by a priest, Father Merrin (Max von Sydow), to save her.

A second film, Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977), set four years after the first, followed Father Philip Lamont (Richard Burton) struggling with his faith, and a seemingly third and final film The Exorcist III (1990), set 15 years after the first, elevated supporting character Detective Kinderman (George C. Scott) to the lead, pursuing a series of murders connected to the MacNeil exorcism.

Exorcist: The Beginning (2004) was the patched-together replacement of an abandoned film, Dominion, and dialled back the story to the earlier life of Father Merrin (Stellan Skarsgård), who first encounters the demonic entity during the excavation of a Christian Byzantine church from the 5th century in Kenya. When that film stalled, the abandoned film elements were restored for Dominion: Prequel to The Exorcist (2005), with the same-ish story and the restoration of the original director and screenplay.

After another cinematic interregnum – I mean, what is this, Spider-Man? – The Exorcist: Believer (2023) was a directly-following-the-original-film sequel, about a demonic possession, 50 years after the original event, and brought back Regan (Blair) and her mother Chris (Ellen Burstyn).

And yet, despite that double-whammy cameo, and making $US137 million ($196 million) off a $US30 million budget, that film was savaged by critics. Now, the franchise has been handed to Flanagan, whose understanding and craftsmanship in the horror genre is perhaps without equal in Hollywood today.

Will it work? Well, The Bible seems to suggest it might. Following the theory that the best Indiana Jones movies are those in which he goes after Biblical artefacts – Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade – it might logically follow that the most potent horror movies are those which draw their inspiration or artistic license from The Bible.

“Certainly, the most potent possession stories do,” Flanagan agrees. “But horror, it is such an incredible spectrum of stories. There are so many … monster films, serial killer stories, there are so many things that kind of stray away from that.

“The shark in Jaws didn’t feel denominational,” Flanagan adds. “But absolutely when you’re talking about The Exorcist, I mean, there’s no way to tell these kinds of stories without, I think, pointing very, very blatantly at The Bible.”

And how fast and hot the trailer lands is really up to the fans. Like Star Wars, Star Trek, Superman and Batman, The Exorcist has a franchise whose fandom have very specific ideas about what works and what does not. Nobody liked Jar Jar Binks. Only the even numbered Star Trek movies are the good ones. Which Superman is the best Superman? Which Batman? The questions are endless.

“That’s fandom,” says Flanagan. “Anytime you’re stepping into something that means something to people, that people have ascribed a sentimental importance to, you’re going to be part of that conversation no matter what,” Flanagan says. “The challenge for people like me is to always remember that we’re fans first.

“The Exorcist meant just as much to me growing up as it means to the people who are going to be having their opinions about our take on it,” Flanagan adds. “In the [same] way that Michael Myers and Freddy Krueger mean something very special to me, in the way that I can talk for hours about the nuances of the Hellraiser franchise.”

The Exorcist: Martyrs will be released in Australia in March 2027.

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