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FEATURE MOVIE

When The Exorcist stunned the world in 1974, the floodgates opened and a torrent of copycat movies poured out. Here are just some of the countless devilish counterfeits to have cashed in on William Friedkin’s success.

It was 50 years ago that William Friedkin’s The Exorcist was released, shocking audiences around the world.Today, Halloween director David Gordon Green hopes to scare up a whole new audience with The Exorcist: Believer . Words Gill Pringle F or the first time since the 1973 film, Oscar winning actress Ellen Burstyn reprises her iconic role as Chris MacNeil, an actress who has been forever altered by what happened to her daughter Regan five decades before.

Beyond the Door 1974

Abby 1974

The new chapter sees Leslie Odom Jr’s ( One Night in Miami ) Victor raising daughter Angela alone, still grieving the death of his pregnant wife in a Haitian earthquake 12 years earlier. But when Angela and her friend Katherine disappear in the woods – only to return three days later with no memory of what happened to them – a chain of events is unleashed which will force Victor to confront the zenith of evil and, in his terror and desperation, seek out the only person alive who has witnessed anything like it before: Chris MacNeil. The film also stars Ann Dowd ( The Handmaid’s Tale, Hereditary ) as Victor’s neighbour, and Grammy winner Jennifer Nettles and Norbert Leo Butz as Katherine’s parents. When The Exorcist (based on William Peter Blatty’s 1971 best-seller) was released, it obliterated box offce records and earned ten Oscar

Ellen Burstyn (Left)

its time, and we wanted to honour the film with this continuation,” says producer Jason Blum. “It’s been 50 years and thousands of horror films since The Exorcist , so for us, it was about trying to go back to an unsettling and original story,” he continues. “It was about trying to convey the horror that a parent can feel when their world – their only child – is threatened, and trying to come to terms with how your beliefs might evolve when you are guiding someone through this unusual world.” Director Green goes further: “Demonic possession is a way that people can explore ideas of more relatable types of possession – internal struggles that we all have,” he says. “It’s a sub-genre of

Demon Witch Child 1974

Antichrist 1974

Exorcismo 1975

nods, becoming the first horror film ever nominated for Best Picture. Starring Burstyn, Max von Sydow, and Linda Blair, it was a landmark moment in horror that changed the genre and moviegoing forever. “The original Exorcist film was groundbreaking for

horror that I’m drawn to because it explores those questions of, ‘Who am I? Who’s within me? Are there things within me that my community might see as questionable? And, if so, can they pull something out of me through relationships, love, intervention?’ I find all these ideas really intriguing.”

• The Exorcist: Believer is out on Jan 17

The House of Exorcism 1975

The Manitou 1975

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