Remembering ‘The Exorcist’ at 50
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A Critic With Monsters on His Mind
The scariest part of Erik Piepenburg’s job as a reporter who covers horror movies? Films that fail to frighten him.Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.Some 10-year-olds might shield their eyes while watching a horror movie. But at that age, Erik Piepenburg was glued to the screen.Growing up in Cleveland, Mr. Piepenburg developed a love of all things horror. Every Friday night at around 11:30, he and his grandmother would turn on the television, flip to channel 43 and hope to find one of their favorite black-and-white films playing — horror classics like “Dracula,” “The Wolf Man” or “Frankenstein.”A former Theater editor for The New York Times, Mr. Piepenburg now uses his monstrous knowledge of the horror genre to write about it in a column for the Movies section. Every week, he recommends five recent horror movies — of the supernatural, psychological or otherwise terrifying kind — that are worth streaming.He’s not partial to any one subgenre, but he does have one hang-up: “If I see one more movie about people going to a cabin in the woods or moving to a haunted house, I’m going to throw my hands up,” he said in a recent conversation.Here, Mr. Piepenburg shares his thoughts on some of the year’s greatest scares, the current golden age of horror and the unforeseen twists and turns of writing about monsters. This interview has been edited and condensed.Where did you get the idea for your column?My editor, Mekado Murphy, had wanted to start a horror column during the coronavirus pandemic, when so many people were forced to stay home and stream films. I offer readers films I think are worth watching in a sea of horror movies — some of which are awful and others that are terrific. I try to watch — or, at least, get through — two to five horror movies a week to make my deadline. I’m not complaining; I think it’s great that we are having this golden age of horror movies, but I would love for someone to tell me what comedy movies I should watch.What contributed to this golden age?There have been several golden ages of horror. There were the psychological thrillers and exploitation films of the ’60s and the slasher movies of the ’80s. I think what’s happening right now is that we are living in such uncertain times in terms of politics, environmental issues, civil rights issues. Anytime there’s global uncertainty, horror movies respond. They hold up a mirror to society and say, “Look at the monsters we’ve become.”So it should come as no surprise that at a time when the world seems topsy-turvy, horror filmmakers would decide the time is right for them to explore why.On the 50th anniversary of “The Exorcist,” you and other Times critics wrote essays that re-explored the film. What story did you want to tell?Mekado told me that he wanted to do this interactive package for the movie. We had a conversation about ways to cover the film and I jokingly said that I always saw “The Exorcist” as a queer movie, and it stuck. I was glad to have the chance to explore the possession in the film through a queer lens. It’s fun to think about the ways in which “The Exorcist” — and most horror movies — aren’t just about the monsters, but the people who create them and what the monsters represent.In an article from this year, you also described “M3gan” as a gay movie. Do you think gay audiences have a special affinity for horror?Well, I think all horror movies are about one of two things: trauma or gayness. That’s just my queer-theory lens that people can accept or reject. But in horror movies, there’s often this notion of otherness — of the monster existing outside of societal norms. I think queer audiences can align themselves with villains who feel like outsiders, like no one understands their feelings.I also think queer audiences appreciate the outrageous, camp quality of horror. “M3gan” is a perfect example. The villain is a demon that you kind of want to be friends with. I know people in my life who can be monsters, but I love them anyway.What trends are you seeing in the horror genre right now?There’s certainly a lot of Covid-inspired films — movies about being locked up inside and fears about contagions. I would say another trend is the slow-burn horror movie, one that takes time to unfold instead of hitting you over the head with monsters, explosions, ghosts and conventional horror scares. The slow burn delivers tiny moments of unease so that by the film’s end, your entire body has become so tense that it’s hard to shake. Those are some of my favorites.What’s a recent horror movie you wish everyone would watch?There’s a film called “The Hole in the Fence,” which I wrote about in my column. It’s about a group of young boys at a religious camp who undergo a sort of “Lord of the Flies” experience. It’s terrifying and has almost no gore, but it really got under my skin. There was another movie that I saw in January called “LandLocked.” Again, there’s no gore. There’s no monsters. But it is a quietly effective horror film. It made me cry. It’s a treat when I can watch a horror movie that moves me so much that even as my heart is racing, I tear up.Is there a horror-related topic you want to explore next in an article?There have been a couple of experimental horror films that toy with form, structure, sound and visuals, like “The Outwaters” and “Skinamarink.” Sometimes the screen will go black or the audio will be distorted. Experimental horror challenges viewers not only to understand horror through monsters, but through the physical experience of watching the film. I think we’re going to start seeing more of those in the future. More
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Diving Into ‘The Exorcist: Believer’
We knew Ellen Burstyn would be back. But what else? A discussion of some of the spoiler moments in the new sequel to the 1973 horror classic.The spooky season has arrived and among this year’s crop of horror franchise resurrections is “The Exorcist: Believer,” the first in a planned trilogy of sequels to William Friedkin’s 1973 classic “The Exorcist.” If you know anything about this revamped version, you’ll know it’s not just one little girl who’s hacked by Satan, but two. For everything else, keep on reading — meaning spoilers ahead.Like the director David Gordon Green’s previous trilogy of “Halloween” reboots, “The Exorcist: Believer” has been critically panned. Given the two movies set to follow — the second installment “The Exorcist: Deceiver” is scheduled for spring of 2025 — it’s a bad start for Green and company. Though I imagine they’re not banking on good reviews so much as the divine power of nostalgia and brand recognition.David Gordon Green narrates a sequence from his film, featuring Leslie Odom Jr. and Lidya Jewett.Eli Joshua Adé/Universal PicturesFor nearly two hours, the film tracks the possession and eventual exorcism of two 13-year old gal pals: Angela (Lidya Jewett), who is Black, and Katherine (Olivia O’Neill), who is white. “Believer” starts out in Haiti with a portentous prelude that hearkens back to the original, in which a Catholic priest stumbles upon satanic heirlooms in a very sinister-looking part of Iraq. Angela’s parents are on vacation in the island country when an earthquake hits, gravely injuring the mother and forcing the father, Tanner (Leslie Odom Jr.), to choose between saving his pregnant wife or the baby inside of her.In the present, Tanner is an affable single dad suggesting that he chose the babe. This assumption makes up the film’s emotional backbone. After the girls go missing and return three days later with their feet mangled and eyes tweaky, they hit a monstrous form of puberty. It’s teenage rebellion made sacrilegious, razed of all of the truly crass and nasty edges that made Linda Blair’s Regan, the possessed girl in the original movie, so shocking to behold.The film pivots away from the girls to focus on feels, courtesy of the original cast-member Ellen Burstyn’s Chris MacNeil (Regan’s mom), now the author of a book about Regan’s possession. Chris isn’t a final girl, and she’s not uniquely skilled at fending off the baddie. But because she’s a legacy character, “Believer” treats her with an air of reverence that gives her a preternatural connection to the devil — and it makes him, a supposedly omnipotent, unknowable being, a lot less scary. The demonic version of Katherine jabs a crucifix through Chris’s eyes, blinding her for the rest of the movie — a condition that parallels the film’s ideas about belief in the indemonstrable. Chris has long been estranged from Regan, who supposedly cut contact with her mother after the release of her book. Chris holds on to the possibility of Regan’s return, which she does, in a final-act cameo by Blair herself.“The Exorcist,” a master class in grief and dread, is quite unlike the formulaic fun of, say, slasher movies that easily breed follow-ups. Famously, Friedkin (and Burstyn, at least until “Believer”) wanted nothing to do with the extended universe that spawned after its release. You don’t need to watch any of the other “Exorcist” movies to understand “Believer,” which only draws from Friedkin’s version — and offers up this extension.The film’s equal-opportunity possession encourages cooperation between racially diverse families, and the jumbo-exorcism in the end doubles as a kumbaya circle for religious harmony. Both families assemble a supergroup of believers to perform the rites: a Protestant minister, a voodoo mistress, an Evangelical speaker-in-tongues, and an ex-Catholic nun. Because believing isn’t about any one religion, it’s a collective act of faith. Circling back to Tanner’s decision in the beginning, the devil, trickster that he is, demands that the parents choose one girl to survive. Katherine’s dad, the most weak-willed of the three, screams out his daughter’s name and — just like Tanner, who had asked for the doctors to save his wife — the opposite happens. Angela survives. But given the shoddiness of the exorcism itself, and the fact that the devil seemed to be calling the shots through the end, I’d imagine Satan has more in store for her. More
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Nine Provocative William Friedkin Movies to Stream
The director specialized in grimy thrillers and social dramas that occasionally courted controversy.An iconoclast even among his New Hollywood peers coming up in the 1970s, the director William Friedkin built a reputation for grimy, high-impact thrillers and social dramas that sought to get a rise out of audiences and frequently drew the controversy they courted.Friedkin, who died Monday at 87, found early success in Hollywood with the one-two punch of “The French Connection” in 1971 and “The Exorcist” in 1973, but his fortunes shifted in the years that followed, which led to a career of unpredictable and often attention-grabbing swerves. One of his best ’80s films, the sleek thriller “To Live and Die in L.A.,” is currently unavailable to stream, but adventurous home viewers will find plenty of scorching work to command their attention.Here are nine films that illustrate Friedkin’s combination of stylistic bravado and willingness to engage on the battlegrounds of race, religion, sexuality and systemic corruption.1970‘The Boys in the Band’Rent it on Amazon, Apple TV and Vudu.Though Friedkin’s relationship with the queer community would turn fraught a decade later with “Cruising,” this adaptation of Mart Crowley’s 1968 Off Broadway play was, at the time, the rare American film to focus entirely (and sympathetically) on the lives of gay men. Friedkin was so impressed by the stage production that all the original cast members were brought into the movie, which takes place mostly in the Upper East Side apartment where a fitfully employed writer (Kenneth Nelson) is holding a birthday party and has invited a motley group of friends. The boozy affair that follows zings with filthy one-liners, but tensions rise as the night carries on and the inner lives of these alienated, often closeted men start to surface.1971‘The French Connection’Rent it on Amazon, Apple TV and Vudu.Friedkin won his only Oscar, for best director, for this ferociously entertaining policier, which remains one of the great New York movies, a seedy snapshot of the city as it once existed — at least through the jaundiced perspective of a detective who has his share of blind spots. With a style that’s simultaneously propulsive and documentarylike in its evocation of place, Friedkin details a heroin smuggling operation that’s making its way to New York from Marseilles via ocean liner. Standing in the way is Popeye Doyle (Gene Hackman), a bigot and an alcoholic who’s willing to go to astonishing lengths to solve the case, including a car chase under an elevated train that Friedkin turned into a classic of its kind.1973‘The Exorcist’Rent it on Amazon, Apple TV, Google Play and Vudu.Any conversation about the scariest movies ever made usually starts with a mention of Friedkin’s demon possession thriller, but the film’s effectiveness involves more than Mike Oldfield’s “Tubular Bells” and the terrifying contortions of a young girl’s body and spirit. “The Exorcist” gains an equal amount of power from the unyielding love a mother (Ellen Burstyn) has for her 12-year-old daughter (Linda Blair) as a demon wrests the girl away from her. Once the Roman Catholic Church gets involved, “The Exorcist” builds to harrowing and often frantic sessions between a priest (a superb Max von Sydow) and the ancient evil he’s desperate to whisk away.1977‘Sorcerer’Rent it on Amazon and Apple TV.After huge back-to-back hits with “The French Connection” and “The Exorcist,” Friedkin adapted the same French novel that Henri-Georges Clouzot had turned into “The Wages of Fear,” a suspense classic about desperate workers driving truckloads of nitroglycerin through a mountain pass. After a troubled and expensive production, “Sorcerer” was a box office failure — coming out the same summer as “Star Wars” didn’t help — but it’s now regarded as one of Friedkin’s best, playing to his strengths in location shooting and intense physical action. Roy Scheider leads an international cast as one of four outlaws who accept $10,000 and legal citizenship for the job of driving nitroglycerin on hazardous South American roads to an oil well 200 miles away.1980‘Cruising’Rent it on Amazon, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.Friedkin had a habit of courting controversy, but nothing on the level of “Cruising,” a crime thriller that gay rights activists protested vociferously during and after production for a portrait of West Village nightlife they felt stigmatized their community. With that caveat in mind, it’s still one for the time capsule, a sleazy yet compelling story about a serial killer who targets gay men in New York’s leather scene and a detective (Al Pacino) who goes deep undercover to solve the case. It’s an understatement to say that Friedkin does not approach the material with the sensitivity his doubters might have wished for, but the locations have an almost tactile griminess to them, and Pacino’s performance roils with inner torment.1994‘Blue Chips’Stream it on Amazon Prime and Paramount+. Rent it on Amazon, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.Working from a script by Ron Shelton, who’d made the superb sports comedies “Bull Durham” and “White Men Can’t Jump,” Friedkin tackled the seedy underbelly of college athletics with typical verve, including dramatized basketball action that’s on par with the real thing. Channeling the chair-whipping tempestuousness of Bobby Knight — who appears as an opposing coach in a cameo — Nick Nolte stars as a legendary college coach who’s starting to miss out on “blue chip” recruits. After his first losing season, he risks his reputation and his conscience by deploying school boosters to offer benefits to top prospects, including a rim-rattling center played by future Hall of Famer Shaquille O’Neal.2003‘The Hunted’Stream it on Max. Rent it on Amazon, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.In what would turn out to be his last major studio production, Friedkin executed this drum-tight, underrated action thriller in the “Rambo” mode about a disillusioned warrior on a killing spree and the former mentor tasked with bringing him to justice. Benicio Del Toro stars as a highly trained Delta Force soldier so traumatized by the genocide of civilians in Kosovo that he takes to the American wilderness and starts gunning down hunters. Echoing his performance in “The Fugitive,” Tommy Lee Jones is the F.B.I. “deep-woods tracker” who tries to retrieve him, with the advantage (and disadvantage) of having taught him everything he knows.2007‘Bug’Stream it on Pluto TV. Rent it on Amazon, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.In the first of two straight collaborations with the playwright Tracy Letts, Friedkin doesn’t hide the stage roots of a drama that takes place mostly within a rundown Oklahoma motel room, but the feverishness of the camera and sound work, along with the two lead performances, have a strong cinematic intensity. “Bug” is also a vital early showcase for Michael Shannon, who projects enough charisma as a drifter to win over a waitress (Ashley Judd) with relationship problems, but soon reveals a frightening volatility. The supposed discovery of an aphid in the motel bed sends these two lonely people into a paranoid frenzy that Friedkin transforms into an alternate reality.2011‘Killer Joe’Stream it on Pluto TV. Rent it on Amazon, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.Deploying his relaxed, mellifluous Southern drawl to sinister purposes, Matthew McConaughey channels Robert Mitchum in Letts’s bracing redneck noir about a trailer-park murder scheme in West Texas that goes sideways. In a plot that owes a little something to “Double Indemnity,” Emile Hirsch plays a wayward 22-year-old who enlists his father (Thomas Haden Church) in a plan to kill his mother and split her $50,000 life insurance policy, but when they hire a cop/contract killer (McConaughey) to do the job, he requires Hirsch’s virginal sister (Juno Temple) to serve as human collateral on future payment. A sequence involving a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken may be the least appetizing product placement in history. More
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Universal Pictures Spends Big for New 'Exorcist' Trilogy
The deal, expected to be announced this week, is for more than $400 million and is a direct response to the streaming giants that are upending the film industry’s economics.LOS ANGELES — Heads are spinning in Hollywood: Universal Pictures and its streaming-service cousin have closed a $400 million-plus megadeal to buy a new “Exorcist” trilogy, signaling a sudden willingness to compete head-on with the technology giants that are upending entertainment industry economics.Donna Langley, the film studio’s chairwoman, teamed with Peacock, NBCUniversal’s fledgling streaming service, to make the purchase, which is expected to be announced this week, according to three people briefed on the matter. These people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the still-private deal, said the price was in the vicinity of the $465 million that Netflix paid in March for two sequels to the 2019 whodunit “Knives Out.”Universal had no immediate comment.The “Knives Out” and “Exorcist” deals — both negotiated by Bryan Lourd, the Creative Artists superagent — solidify a new streaming gold rush. The eye-popping talent paydays of 2017 and 2018, when Netflix scooped up big-name television creators, have migrated to the film world.The proliferation of streaming services and their scramble for subscribers has driven up prices for established film properties and filmmakers. At the same time, traditional movie companies are under more pressure than ever to control those same creative assets; moviegoing has been severely disrupted by the pandemic and may never fully recover.Linda Blair as the possessed Regan in the original “Exorcist,” which was nominated for 10 Academy Awards, including best picture.Warner Bros. Entertainment, via Associated PressIt is surprising, however, that Universal and Peacock have come to the table in such a major way. NBCUniversal, which is owned by Comcast, has started to devote more resources to the little-watched Peacock. Programming from the Tokyo Olympics is available on the service, for instance. But Hollywood has heretofore viewed the year-old Peacock as unwilling to compete for top-tier movie deals.Universal’s decision to revisit “The Exorcist” is striking in and of itself. The R-rated 1973 film about a baffled mother (Ellen Burstyn) and her demonically possessed daughter (Linda Blair) was a global box office sensation — “the biggest thing to hit the industry since Mary Pickford, popcorn, pornography and ‘The Godfather,’” as Vincent Canby wrote in The New York Times in 1974. It has become a cultural touchstone, the type of film that fans and critics guard as sacrosanct.Universal is not remaking “The Exorcist,” which was directed by William Friedkin from a screenplay that William Peter Blatty adapted from his own novel. But the studio will, for the first time, return the Oscar-winning Ms. Burstyn to the franchise. (Two forgettable “Exorcist” sequels and a prequel were made without her between 1977 and 2004.) Joining her will be Leslie Odom Jr., a Tony winner for “Hamilton” on Broadway and a double Oscar nominee for “One Night in Miami.” He will play the father of a possessed child. Desperate for help, he tracks down Ms. Burstyn’s character.Suffice it to say, Satan is not thrilled to see her again.David Gordon Green, known for Universal’s blockbuster 2018 reboot of the “Halloween” horror franchise, will direct the new “Exorcist” films and serve as a screenwriter. The horror impresario Jason Blum (“Get Out,” the “Purge” series) is among the producers, along with David Robinson, whose company, the independent Morgan Creek Entertainment, has held the “Exorcist” movie rights. The Blumhouse film executive Couper Samuelson is among the executive producers. (Blumhouse has a first-look deal with Universal.)The first film in the trilogy is expected to arrive in theaters in late 2023. Under the terms of the deal, the second and third films could debut on Peacock, according to one of the people briefed on the matter.Donna Langley, Universal’s chairwoman, and the horror maestro Jason Blum, who will help produce the new trilogy.Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for CinemaconIn a business sense, the deal reflects the boldness of Ms. Langley, chairwoman of the Universal Filmed Entertainment Group. In the wake of the pandemic, which brought movie production to a halt, she led an effort to develop safety protocols to get the assembly lines moving again. In the case of “Exorcist,” she led a push inside NBCUniversal to pull off the big-money deal.The cost of the package is so high because Ms. Langley and her deals maven, Jimmy Horowitz, did not play by Hollywood’s old economic rules; they took a risk and played by new ones — those used by streaming insurgents like Netflix, Amazon and Apple to outbid traditional film companies, at least until now.The old model, the one that studios have used for decades to make high-profile film deals, involves paying fees upfront and then sharing a portion of the revenue from ticket sales, DVD purchases and television rerun licensing around the world. The bigger the hit, the bigger the “back end” paydays for certain talent partners.The streaming giants have done it differently. They pay more upfront — usually much, much more — in lieu of any back-end payments, which gives them complete control over future revenue. It means that talent partners get paid as if their projects are hits before they are released (or even made). The risk for talent: If their projects become monster hits, they do not get a piece of the windfall. More
