Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Dustin Rowles | Film | October 12, 2026
I’ve seen The Exorcist: Martyrs trailer a couple of times over the last few days, and I’m not sold on it. I love Mike Flanagan, and I even like what I’ve seen of his new Carrie, so far, though I have little fealty to the original. Flanagan knows what he’s doing when it comes to horror, but I am concerned that the Exorcist franchise is simply too chopped to save. There are one-and-a-half good Exorcist movies (the original, and Part III in 1990 is the half), a decent The Exorcist television series a decade ago, and that’s kind of it.
Even if the movie is good (and Flanagan obviously has a great track record), can star power (Scarlett Johansson, Laurence Fishburne, Chiwetel Ejiofor) and the Flanagan regulars (Rahul Kohli, Samantha Sloyan, Kate Siegel, Carla Gugino, etc.) bring back interest in the franchise? Just three years after David Gordon Green’s The Exorcist: Believer absolutely bit it at the box office?
Universal and Blumhouse paid $400 million for the rights to the franchise back in 2021, so they have every incentive to get this thing off the ground. But I just don’t know if a thriller about serial killers (and possibly Scarjo’s son) being possessed by demons is the way to renew interest in a franchise most folks have lost interest in. It’s like the Terminator movies, or Robin Hood movies — they just keep knocking at the box-office door, but nobody’s home.
What do y’all think?
The Exorcist: Martyrs opens on March 12th.
