Having left her indelible mark on Marvel and worked under the direction of Wes Anderson, Spike Jonze and Noah Baumbach, Scarlett Johansson is about to head into territory she's never really visited on screen before: horror. And not just any horror, since the actress will soon be headlining The Exorcist: Martyrs, Mike Flanagan's new film, which aims to give the famous franchise a radically different face. Lurking behind this new demonic outing is a full-blown police investigation, complete with a serial killer, ritual murders and a supernatural threat that gradually works its way into the story. Right, let me run you through the pitch and what's going on behind the scenes.
Scarlett Johansson doing a lot of screaming?
The other thing worth noting is that Universal Pictures has just confirmed the film's official title and dropped a first teaser, ahead of a full trailer due this Friday. The first images already show Scarlett Johansson as Julie Miller, a detective with the NYPD homicide squad, on the trail of a particularly terrifying serial killer. Quite the change of gear for the actress, who is tackling a proper horror film for the first time here. So in The Exorcist: Martyrs, Scarlett Johansson plays Julie Miller, a single mother and NYPD detective investigating a serial killer nicknamed Father Sunday, played by John Leguizamo. She manages to arrest the criminal and then attends his execution, but as usual, nothing goes to plan.
And above all, what happens is that Father Sunday's death does nothing whatsoever to stop the killings. The film then gradually tips the investigation in a far murkier direction, with murders inspired by the torments inflicted on the martyrs of Catholic tradition. Chiwetel Ejiofor and Laurence Fishburne are the other two big names in the cast, each playing a priest who ends up caught up in this strange business.
Somewhere between a police investigation and some seriously weird possession
Rather than rehashing the formula of William Friedkin's film or serving up another story about a family facing a demonic possession, Mike Flanagan wants to shake things up by blending religious horror with something closer to a crime thriller, citing David Fincher's Seven as an influence and, of course, The Silence of the Lambs, the reference point whenever horror comes up. The director wants to pull possession out of its traditional setting, though it will obviously still have its place in the film — it just won't be the only engine driving the story.
It's an approach that inevitably recalls The Exorcist III, one of the franchise's most singular entries, released in 1990 and directed by William Peter Blatty. That film already mixed police investigation, serial killer, religion and demonic forces. The comparison stops there, though, says Mike Flanagan, who insists his Exorcist: Martyrs won't be a new version of The Exorcist III, but an original story with new characters.
The Exorcist: Martyrs is due to hit cinemas on 10 March 2027.
