Trailer Watch: A Familiar Face Returns To Confront Demonic Forces In The Exorcist: Believer

The trailer for the highly-anticipated The Exorcist revival has finally arrived — and fans will see a familiar character, back to confront the demonic forces which tormented her family decades before.

Called The Exorcist: Believer, the movie — produced by fright merchant Jason Blum and directed by David Gordon Green — picks up 50 years after the events depicted in the William Friedkin-helmed original.

Per the official synopsis: “Since the death of his pregnant wife in a Haitian earthquake 12 years ago, Victor Fielding (Leslie Odom, Jr) has raised their daughter, Angela (Lidya Jewett) on his own. But when Angela and her friend Katherine (Olivia Marcum), disappear in the woods, only to return three days later with no memory of what happened to them, it unleashes a chain of events that will force Victor to confront the nadir of evil and, in his terror and desperation, seek out the only person alive who has witnessed anything like it before: Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn).”

In the original Exorcist, it was MacNeil who enlisted two Catholic priests (Max von Sydow and Jason Miller) to cast out the demon that had possessed her daughter Regan (Linda Blair). (Blair previously said that she isn't in Believer but pictures of her from the first movie are featured In the trailer. Maybe she'll pull an Andrew Garfield on us. Who knows?)

The Exorcist, based on William Peter Blatty’s novel, came out nearly 50 years ago (in 1973 on Boxing Day, no less!). It was a box-office sensation and went on to become the first horror movie to receive a Best Picture Oscar nomination; it bagged 10 nods in total and won Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Sound.

“I never thought of it as a horror film,” said Friedkin of the original Exorcist in the recent 100 Years of Warner Bros documentary. “I always thought of it as a film about the mystery of faith.”

Green and Blum are no strangers in rebooting horror classics. In 2018, they tackled John Carpenter’s Halloween, which was followed by two sequels, 2021’s Halloween Kills and 2022’s Halloween Ends.

Believer, like the recent iteration of Halloween, ignores the narratives the original movie spawned in two sequels, two prequels and a TV series over the years. 

The latest Exorcist instalment is part of a trilogy, which Universal reportedly coughed up U$400 million (S$531 mil) for in 2021. The follow-up, The Exorcist: Deceiver drops in cinemas on Apr 14, 2025. No word on the title and release date for the third chapter.

Watch the trailer here: