Please note: Some production notes may contain spoilers.

THE SYNOPSIS

Exactly 50 years ago this fall, the most terrifying horror film in history landed on screens, shocking audiences around the world. Now, a new chapter begins. From Blumhouse and director DAVID GORDON GREEN, who shattered the status quo with their resurrection of the Halloween franchise, comes The Exorcist: Believer.

Since the death of his pregnant wife in a Haitian earthquake 13 years ago, Victor Fielding (Tony winner and Oscar® nominee LESLIE ODOM, JR.; One Night in Miami, Hamilton) has raised their daughter, Angela (LIDYA JEWETT, Good Girls) on his own.

But when Angela and her friend Katherine (newcomer OLIVIA O’NEILL), 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.

For the first time since the 1973 film, Oscar® winner 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.

The film also stars Emmy Award winner ANN DOWD (The Handmaid’s Tale, Hereditary) as Ann, Victor and Angela’s neighbor, and three-time Grammy winner JENNIFER NETTLES (Harriet, The Righteous Gemstones) and two-time Tony winner NORBERT LEO BUTZ (Fosse/Verdon, Bloodline) as Miranda and Tony, the parents of Katherine.

The cast includes RAPHAEL SBARGE (Once Upon a Time) as Pastor Don Revans, OKWUI OKPOKWASILI (Julie Taymor’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream) as Doctor Beehibe, DANNY McCARTHY (Somebody Somewhere) as Stuart, E.J. BONILLA (Gemini Man) as Father Maddox, TRACEY GRAVES (On Ten) as Sorenne Fielding and CELESTE OLIVIA (We Own This City) as Detective Konick.

When The Exorcist, based on the best-selling book by William Peter Blatty, was released, it changed the culture forever, obliterating box-office records and earning 10 Academy Award® nominations, becoming the first horror film ever nominated for Best Picture.

The Exorcist: Believer is directed by DAVID GORDON GREEN from a screenplay by PETER SATTLER (Camp X-Ray) & DAVID GORDON GREEN, from a story by SCOTT TEEMS (Halloween Kills) & DANNY MCBRIDE (Halloween trilogy) & DAVID GORDON GREEN. The film is produced by JASON BLUM p.g.a. for Blumhouse and by DAVID ROBINSON p.g.a. and JAMES G. ROBINSON for Morgan Creek Entertainment.

The executive producers are DAVID GORDON GREEN, DANNY McBRIDE, STEPHANIE ALLAIN, RYAN TUREK, BRIAN ROBINSON, CHRISTOPHER MERRILL, MARK DAVID KATCHUR and ATILLA YÜCER.

The film’s director of photography is MICHAEL SIMMONDS (Blumhouse’s Halloween franchise, The Righteous Gemstones). The production designer is BRANDON TONNER-CONNOLLY (The Big Sick, Blockers) and the editor is TIM ALVERSON, ace (Blumhouse’s Halloween franchise, The Forever Purge). The film’s costume designers are LIZZ WOLF (Creed III, Pacific Rim: Uprising) and JENNY EAGAN (Knives Out, Glass Onion).

The music is by DAVID WINGO (Barry, Midnight Special) and AMMAN ABBASI (music consultant on Blumhouse’s Halloween franchise), with music supervision by DEVOE YATES (Blumhouse’s Halloween franchise, Insidious: The Red Door) and GABE HILFER (The White Lotus, Don’t Look Up). The Special Make-Up FX Designer is CHRISTOPHER NELSON (Blumhouse’s Halloween franchise, Thor: Love and Thunder) and the casting is by Blumhouse’s TERRI TAYLOR, csa; SARAH DOMEIER LINDO, csa; and ALLY CONOVER, csa.

THE BACKSTORY

When the novel by William Peter Blatty, The Exorcist, arrived on shelves in 1971, a spellbound populace devoured the story of shaken faith, family trauma and demonic possession. When director William Friedkin brought the story—from an original screenplay by Blatty—to the screen in December 1973, global audiences were treated to an unimaginable fear that shook them to their core. The Exorcist broke box-office records and featured a deceptively simple score that fueled nightmares. The film, which starred Ellen Burstyn, Max von Sydow and newcomer Linda Blair, was a landmark moment in horror that changed the genre and moviegoing forever.

Now, nearly 50 years since the blockbuster’s theatrical launch, The Exorcist: Believer marks a new beginning that takes audiences into the darkest heart of inexplicable evil. “The original Exorcist film was groundbreaking for its time, and we wanted to honor the film with this continuation,” producer Jason Blum says. “It’s been 50 years, and thousands of horror films have been released since The Exorcist, so, for us, it was about trying to go back to an unsettling and original story. 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 have to evolve when you are guiding someone through this unusual world.”

Morgan Creek principals James G. Robinson and David Robinson had bought the rights to The Exorcist approximately 25 years ago from creator Blatty, and the father and son filmmakers had been waiting for the perfect time, and the perfect filmmaking team, to relaunch it. After they witnessed what Blum and writer-director David Gordon Green achieved with the Halloween films, they approached Blum about igniting a new chapter for the iconic property. “Having partners like Jason and David has been incredible,” David Robinson says. “Their meticulous attention to detail and creative expertise have undeniably shaped the project into a film more chilling than any of us could have imagined.”

Green, working first with Scott Teems and Danny McBride to develop the screenstory and then with screenwriter Peter Sattler on the script, shaped the story of Victor Fielding, a grieving photographer who had lost his wife in a Haitian earthquake years earlier. Just as he and his daughter Angela start to move on, a demonic presence worms its way into their family—possessing Angela and her best friend.

That horrifying event will force the solitary Victor to rely on other people for support and guidance and will ultimately lead him toward fabled exorcism survivor Chris MacNeil. “The film explores themes about unity and how people overcome hardships with community,” Green says. “Demonic possession is a way that people can explore ideas of more relatable types of possession: internal struggles that we all have. It’s a subgenre of 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?’ All of these ideas I find really intriguing.”

Much like the approach Green and Blumhouse took with the Halloween franchise, The Exorcist: Believer views only the 1973 film as canon. Although 1973’s The Exorcist had sequels over the proceeding decades, from the viewpoint of this movie’s narrative, the other films did not occur. “As with our 2018 version of Halloween, there are a generation of fans who may not be familiar with the original film of The Exorcist,” Blum says. “The Exorcist: Believer is a contemporary take that is a snapshot of our times: A single father faced with raising a teenage daughter on his own and embracing a community to help, that frankly, he didn’t think that he would ever need to rely on. This story brings together the characters and elements of the original that are so beloved by horror fans.”

For Green, the film also allowed him to investigate and contemplate a long-held interest. “I’ve grown up with a fascination of religions of all sorts,” Green says. “When I see a movie that has a religious theme, I’ll often read more about it, or research it.” Although the 1973 film relied primarily on a Catholic interpretation of possession, The Exorcist: Believer examines it from the perspective of multiple faiths. “This was an opportunity to take a lot of different perspectives of possession and explore it through a variety of characters and their perspectives of religion,” Green says. Dramatically and emotionally, however, Green wanted to keep the focus on how these inexplicable events affect the people at the center of the story. “I’m always looking at dramatic roots, and for relatable characters,” Green says. “I’m looking for situations on Earth that I can identify with. In this film we do explore the spectacular, but we’re always trying to keep one hand grounded on how these events might be explained and understood.”

The result is a film, Blum says, that is “riveting, dramatic, dark and horrifying.” For Green, it proved to be a filmmaking experience unlike any other. “The true rollercoaster of this production was being able to find joy in darkness, find the community in loneliness, and find a movie that has a human quality ingrained in the experience of making it that audiences, hopefully, can appreciate when they see the film,” Green says.

THE CHARACTERS

Victor Fielding
Leslie Odom, Jr.

Thirteen years ago, when photographer Victor Fielding’s beloved wife, Sorenne (Tracey Graves), was trapped in an earthquake in Haiti, the doctors were only able to save their unborn daughter, Angela (Lidya Jewett). Victor is gripped with survivor’s guilt and has done his best to create a loving home, but when his daughter’s innocent “school skip day” turns into a three-day search in the woods for Angela and her best friend Katherine (Olivia O’Neill), Victor questions if the curse that befell him overseas has followed them back to the States.

Leslie Odom, Jr., known for his Tony Award-winning work in Hamilton and films such as One Night in Miami and Harriet, was cast to portray Victor. Odom embodied the everyman who would do anything—even walk through hell—to get his daughter back. “Victor is an artist who is dealing with all these hardships,” director David Gordon Green says. “As a portrait photographer in a strip mall, we show the side of a guy who’s struggling for expression and a creative place to put his mind. Angela is everything to Victor, and he lives a very isolated life. He doesn’t connect too well to his community or to his neighbors, and he has put church and faith behind him. Instead, he puts everything he has into the protective relationship and world of his daughter. The events of this story challenge his world view on a fundamental level. This isolated character becomes exposed to community, to other ways of looking at the world, and to other ways of providing freedom and expression to his daughter.”

As Green and his fellow screenwriter Peter Sattler wrote the film’s story, they had Odom in mind for the role. “I have long admired the relatability and warmth, but also the intensity, that Leslie has,” Green says. “His reputation is one of dedication to every role. His talent is so versatile, and his energy is boundless. I also loved the idea of working with someone who—even with so much great work behind him—is young and being discovered in movies…still being born as an artist.”

The chance to play Victor was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Odom. “I’m one of the biggest Exorcist fans that you will meet,” Odom says. “It was the specificity of the relationships in The Exorcist—the truth, humanity and desperation—that those actors brought. When I heard that David Gordon Green was making this movie, I emailed my agent that this was a dream project. Seven or eight months later, I got the call to join David on this adventure. I feel like I won a fan contest. I wanted to make sure that the emotions the actors expressed in the original film were evident in ours, too.”

Odom was particularly struck by Ellen Burstyn’s performance in the 1973 film. “I was a teenager when I first saw The Exorcist and so shaken by Ellen’s work,” Odom says. “It’s disarming in its humanity and honesty. I was nervous to work with her, but during our first minute, she gave me this huge, welcoming hug. Then, we rolled our sleeves up and started asking questions and interrogating the material. She gave us such a gift with her presence and her blessing.”

Burstyn was just as wowed by him. “I’ve fallen in love with Leslie,” Burstyn says. “We have an age difference that probably makes it impossible to hope; still, I’m in love. He’s a wonderful actor, artist and human being. I gave him 100 percent at every level. There’s no richer experience in my life than being creative and working with someone who is the same. He and I were in this together. We were good playmates who had fun with this very difficult material.”

Chris MacNeil
Ellen Burstyn

For the first time in five decades, Oscar® winner Ellen Burstyn returns to the role of Chris MacNeil, the woman who moved heaven and Earth to save her daughter, Regan (Linda Blair), from an unthinkable evil in the 1973 film. Burstyn’s role in The Exorcist: Believer sets a new record for the longest live-action actor-character pairing in film history. “We would have no film without Ellen,” producer David Robinson says. “She is an extraordinary actor, and we knew what she could bring to this movie and to the rest of the cast. She is the heart of the story. Not only is she an incredible actress, but when audiences see the relationship that she has with Leslie and the children, they will be so impressed.” Adds producer Jason Blum: “Having Ellen Burstyn in this film ties the DNA of this movie to the original. For all fans—especially me—that is very satisfying.”

Director David Gordon Green had been courting Burstyn’s involvement for some time. “Several years ago, I reached out to Ellen to say, ‘This is a project I’m working on. Would you want to be involved?’” Green says. “Those conversations started hesitantly for both of us, trying to figure out if this was something we wanted to develop together. When I had a script to share with her, I went to New York to meet her. She had a lot of questions and ideas. Quickly, we realized that she had enthusiasm, energy and possibility for a character that she created 50 years ago, as well as for our themes of how people overcome hardships with their community. She’s responded to those themes in her own life.”

Together, Green and Burstyn imagined the journey that Chris MacNeil began after her daughter Regan’s brutal exorcism in 1973. Since the events of the first film, Chris has dedicated her life to helping others understand the phenomenon of possession—especially other parents who have gone through hardships of the unexplained. Chris is now a successful author who embarked upon this work for the love of her daughter, and she comes into Victor’s orbit through an introduction to her writings by Victor’s neighbor, Ann (Ann Dowd). “Chris has had 50 years of living,” Burstyn says, “And I thought, ‘Who has she become? What are the experiences that happened to her in those 50 years, and how does that affect the person she is now?’ That interested me creatively. We are, in any moment of time, the sum total of everything that has happened to us and how that has become part of our character. That was an interesting challenge to explore.”

Burstyn also saw the role, and her fee for her work in the film, as an opportunity to help new generations of actors, for decades to come, through an organization that she has dedicated most of her career to: The Actors Studio. “This role gave me the opportunity to do something I’ve been trying to do for a long time, which was to create a scholarship program for talented artists who can’t afford to pay at The Actors Studio,” says Burstyn, who serves as the Studio’s co-president. “I had been wishing for that, and I realized that this was the answer to that problem.”

Ann
Ann Dowd

Since they moved into the neighborhood, Victor and Angela have thought of their next-door neighbor Ann as merely nosy and annoying. It appeared that Ann, a local nurse, was only interested in being their trash-cans-in-the-street cop. But as Angela’s possession takes hold of her body and mind, Victor realizes that Ann was once an aspiring nun, whose knowledge of the occult could be one of the few saving graces for Angela.

To bring the character to life, director David Gordon Green turned to former collaborator Ann Dowd, whose celebrated career spans work from Philadelphia and Compliance to The Handmaid’s Tale. Dowd performed on Green’s Our Brand Is Crisis, and they’d wanted to work together again since. “I love David as a friend and as a human being,” Dowd says. “I love his energy and insanity—his desire to experiment, to find joy, to take a risk. Working with David is like traveling to another planet—one you didn’t know existed and you’re not sure you want to go to. You give it everything you’ve got because you trust him, and then you end up having the time of your life.”

Dowd also had an indelible memory of seeing the 1973 film. “I was a teenager when I saw it,” Dowd says. “It scared the wits out of me, and what sticks out is that my father saw it, too. He’s a devout Catholic, and it really scared him. So, I have memories of fear. I had no interest to discuss it further, or to bring it up at the dinner table.” She brought those memories of terror to her role of a woman who is battling demons of her own. “Ann has a challenging past for her to let go of, to settle with,” Dowd says. “She dove into nursing, being a person of service. She remains a devout Catholic, and she’s about to understand much more about her faith, her awareness of connection, and what little possessions come at us every day.”

The actress loved how her character came into her hidden strengths. “I don’t think Ann knew she had any of this in her,” Dowd says. “She’s a very private person who hasn’t sorted through her life’s early disappointment. She was ready to serve the Lord and become a nun, but that crashed due to her actions. I don’t know that she was able and willing to sit with forgiving herself or come to an understanding of what her faith means on a very personal level.”

Miranda and Tony
Jennifer Nettles and Norbert Leo Butz

Miranda is a deeply fierce mother and wife who is a pillar in her town and church. The character, who is brought to life by multihyphenate actress Jennifer Nettles, has an unshakeable faith in God that defines her existence. When her daughter, Katherine (Olivia O’Neill), is possessed, Miranda leans on her church community to eradicate the evil that has blasphemed her town. “To be part of a reimagining and a reinvigorating of such an iconic story was thrilling to me,” Nettles says. “I loved the way the script honored and paid homage to the original story, but also gave it such a fresh new lens. It speaks of the ways we’re all diverse in terms of our beliefs and our religions, but how we are stronger when we come together.”

Miranda is a rock of reliability in her church and home, yet she’s open to the unconventional and the unknown. “She is the alpha of the family who keeps everything going, sane and safe—until this story happens,” Nettles says. “Miranda is the first one who calls this a possession. She is also the only mother represented in the current story. To have that feeling of helplessness about her child—that no one’s going to believe me, and I have no idea how to help her—was emotionally intense.”

Miranda’s steadfast husband, Tony, is her second-in-command at their First Baptist congregation. In addition to helping to raise Katherine—along with Katherine’s brother Tyler (RORY GROSS) and sister Hannah (NORAH ELIN MURPHY)—Tony finds his faith crumbling when his daughter is possessed. Portrayed by two-time Tony winner Norbert Leo Butz, Tony attempts to bring his full faith to save Katherine and Angela from eternal damnation…while trying to overcome a temptation to save his daughter alone.

Angela Fielding and Katherine
Lidya Jewett and Olivia O’Neill

Angela, played by Lidya Jewett, and her best friend, Katherine, played by Olivia O’Neill, only had one plan on the day they disappeared: to skip school and hang out in the woods for a few hours. After getting lost on the way home, however, they kept walking. When they were found shivering together in the corner of a barn—30 miles from home—they had no idea that three days had passed. What they brought back with them will change their lives, and the lives of their families and community, forever.

The audition process to find the perfect duo—two girls who could play both innocent and possessed—was extensive. “As you can imagine, finding two young women to follow in the footsteps of Linda Blair was an extraordinary quest,” director David Gordon Green says. “I wanted the actors to be relative discoveries because I wasn’t looking for the obvious Hollywood kid-actor sensibility. I was looking for naturalism. I was looking for something distinctive, a little left of center. And then I met Olivia and then Lidya.”

The filmmakers took extensive pains to make sure that the young actors could handle the film’s often disturbing material, as well as the rigors of being central characters in a major film production. “You want to make sure that they are okay with having an emotionally complex journey because these characters go to very tough places,” Green says. “We wanted to make sure there was a healthy environment for them both on-set and off. That starts with great families and great parental support, and then we also brought in psychologists and educators. All of that was critically important because not only do these young women have to memorize lines and act like they’re possessed by a demon, but they also have to sit in a makeup chair for two and a half hours each day, and go to school, and deal with a bunch of crazy people on a film crew trying to make a movie. So, it’s a tremendous psychological challenge for any young actor.”

Both Jewett and O’Neill, and their families, exceeded Green’s expectations. “Olivia and Lidya just made every day a true pleasure,” Green says. “When they walked onto set, they were ready, and they greeted all those challenges like champions.”

The young actors also had to progress through multiple levels of possession, as the demon takes greater control of them over time. They worked closely with Green to keep their performances in-sync with each other and the film’s narrative. “David showed us what he was thinking for the stages and the levels of possession,” Jewett says. “He told me the percentages of how much crazy he wanted for a scene. That helped us visualize. Some scenes, he would have me do them a stoic way. One day, he would have me do the scene as sweet Angela, and other days as a super-aggressive version.”

Green encouraged the young actresses to go all in. “When I watched the original film, I thought, ‘this is insane,’” Jewett says. “That was the first time that I’d seen anything like that. When I was in the mirror practicing lines, it felt weird because I was just me. But when I had my demon makeup on, it just became the character. With our lighting and with us being strapped to the chair, it felt natural. I was embodying her—mentally, vocally and physically. The makeup and the lighting did half the work. We didn’t have to be as creepy as we might have if we had no makeup on. The lighting and makeup from different angles made it scarier…without my saying anything.”

The actors had to figure out who their characters were both before and after the possession. “I had to know who Katherine was, who demon Katherine was, and everything in between,” O’Neill says. “I wanted to make sure you could clearly see where these stages were, but also blend them together when Katherine is possessed. My YouTube search history is full of weird, possessed videos...”

O’Neill even made a Google document of easter eggs in the film and items that she noticed about characters in the 1973 film. “I’m so excited for the viewers to see all the nods and different references to the original in our film,” O’Neill says. “Because a lot of them aren’t in plain sight—you have to look and listen closely for them.”

Co-star Ann Dowd was mesmerized by how talented Jewett and O’Neill were during the shoot. “Lidya and Olivia were exceptional from start to finish,” Dowd says. “Exceptional actresses, exceptional human beings. It was a privilege to work with them.”

Ellen Burstyn empathized with the young performers’ arduous tasks. Few in the history of film could relate more to what the actresses were attempting to embody. “It’s a terrifying thought that you can be taken over by a force that’s inside,” Burstyn says. “It’s one thing to be taken over by somebody coming into your room, kidnapping you. But the idea of a force being able to get possession of you and you can’t control it? I don’t think there’s anything more terrifying.”

THE SPIRITUALITY AND DEMONOLOGY

“The rite of exorcism is one of the oldest human rituals. Every culture, in every country for as far back as history has been recorded, has a ceremony to dispel negative energies and journey toward healing. From the Muslim rites, to Jewish dybbuks and Zoroastrian texts. Why there’s even several exorcism incantations in the Dead Sea Scrolls.” – Chris MacNeil in The Exorcist: Believer

While the 1973 film explored demonic possession from a predominantly Catholic perspective, The Exorcist: Believer incorporates multiple faiths in the fight to save two young girls. “My efforts on this movie were to make it a dialogue about the unknown,” director David Gordon Green says. “The film is dealing with the vulnerability of parenthood when you have a child with an unexplainable illness. How you approach a crisis like that is shaped by your own belief system: whether you’re a family that’s devout Baptist or a family that doesn’t believe in God, or a family that’s looking to the medical world, either with great hope or with great suspicion. The film engages in that conversation about science and spirituality.”

Green knew early in the story-development process that he wanted this film to incorporate multiple faith and non-faith perspectives. “Growing up, I was a kid that went to church every Sunday, but I was also that annoying kid that would ask questions and challenge the institution a little and wonder what was beyond,” Green says. “As I grew up, I was exposed to more cultures, various religious perspectives, and became close friends with people that believed very differently than I was taught to believe. So, my research for the film began as naive curiosity, wondering about various religious perspectives on possession and various rituals and ceremonies that paralleled the demonic universe that we were exploring. In that process, I had a chance to talk to academics and faith leaders of all sorts and they would often recommend books for me to read.”

Much of that research landed on the screen in various forms, and spiritual experts from every faith referenced in The Exorcist: Believer were hired to consult with the filmmakers and the actors. In the film, the mission to save Angela and Katherine includes four primary community faith leaders: Catholic priest Father Maddox (E.J. Bonilla), Victor’s friend Stuart, a Pentecostal preacher (Danny McCarthy), Doctor Beehibe, a root doctor (Okwui Okpokwasili) and Pastor Don Revans, a Baptist preacher (Raphael Sbarge).

As the production’s Spiritual Coordinator CARLA DUREN ensured the spiritual safety of the cast and crew—including their mental and emotional wellbeing. The rituals around exorcism and demonology are varied, fascinating and often mysterious.

• According to Carla Duren, many of the ritualistic practices and spells seen and heard within the film are from actual exorcism rites and practices, including some of Doctor Beehibe’s practices, which are rooted in spiritual and healing methods that originated in various parts of Africa.
• Consulting producer GAMAL J. PALMER was brought on to consider culturally important moments that required deep sensitivity. “This was done to make sure that we were accurate in terms of an inclusion process or with diversity,” Palmer says. “We wanted to make sure that we were representing people in a way that is authentic and that doesn’t perpetuate stereotypes.”
• Within the Catholic church, exorcism still maintains an air of secrecy. According to FATHER JOSEPH MORRIS—priest for the Archdiocese of Atlanta—no one within a diocese knows who the real exorcist is. For the exorcist’s protection, as well as for the safety of those he is ordained to help, it is imperative that he remains anonymous.
• According to project consultant DR. DAVID BELL, a professor at Georgia State University who specializes in psychology of religion, well-to-do religions, generally, do not have as many angry demons. But when life is rough, when minimum life requirements aren’t met in the lower socioeconomic status, there tends to be more demonology.
• Bell states that, overall, wealthy communities in the States are less likely than poorer ones to believe in demons and angels. The Black church, historically, has a much more tangible belief system in these figures—as do Pentecostal churches and religious communities that occupy more rural areas of the States.
• The demon that possesses the girls in The Exorcist: Believer is a Mesopotamian figure called Lamashtu—fabled by the ancient peoples as a bloodthirsty succubus who has become a hungry thief of newborns. According to the Harvard Library Bulletin, “By the first millennium BCE, Lamashtu was portrayed consistently with a lion’s head and a woman’s body, while retaining the trait of bird talons for feet.”
• Lamashtu is a different demon than the demon in the original novel and 1973 film. That demon was Pazuzu. According to the website for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Pazuzu, as a powerful demon, was frequently set up as a shield against another supernatural terror: Lamashtu, a female demon with broad and far-ranging destructive powers, especially feared by pregnant women and those with newborns, who were her favored (but not only) victims.”
• Special Make-Up FX Designer Christopher Nelson and director David Gordon Green were inspired by the figure to create the film’s terrifying demon. “We came to a happy medium between the supernatural and the reality for Lamashtu,” Nelson says.
• It took six months to design, life-cast, and sculpt Lamashtu. Lamashtu is played by LIZE JOHNSTON (Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities).
• Before production began, Olivia O’Neill’s mother brought her to a church in order to get a blessing (just to be safe). While there, she met the legendary Martin Sheen, who gave O’Neill his personal rosary for her protection during filming.

THE MAKEUP

To take audiences into the heart of darkness, David Gordon Green and Oscar®-winning SPFX makeup designer Christopher Nelson mapped out the film so that the demon girls would go through four makeup stages of possession: Stage 1 through Stage 3. Originally there were four stages. “We called Stage 1 ‘naughty,’ followed by ‘nasty’ and ‘gnarly,’” Green says. “Stage 4 became ‘never again,’ because we wouldn’t even film it. We got the girls in the makeup, and we were like, ‘nope, never gonna do that.’ The makeup often required that the performers commit to hours of makeup each morning.

• Stage 1, aka “naughty,” creates just a sense that something is not right with the girls. “It just feels a little ‘off,’” Green says. “It can be a redness to the eyes, some scratches, a pale face, a slight receding hairline.
• Stage 2, aka “nasty,” ups the violence. “The girls might be cutting themselves, scratching themselves, picking at their hair, finding little infections, and the physical attributes get a little bit nastier,” Green says.
• Stage 3, “gnarly,” is the final stage. “By the climax of the film, these characters have not bathed and not eaten healthy foods and have been in violent tantrums,” Green says. “The extreme physical frustrations manifest themselves in these girls, and that's when we went to full-on prosthetics and the makeup got very intense, and the attributes got horrific.”
• Olivia O’Neill’s favorite part about “Stage 3” Katherine was in finding moments with her co-star Lydia Jewett that typified the calm before the storm. “Lidya and I worked together,” O’Neill says. “We’d be back-to-back in the chairs, and we would make up different things. No two takes were the same, especially with Stage 3. I love playing that because it was Stage 1 on steroids, and I was able carve out those moments.”

THE LOCATIONS, PRODUCTION DESIGN AND SPECIAL EFFECTS

• In November 2021, several months before principal photography began, the crew gathered for a week in Savannah, Georgia, to film all scenes with Ellen Burstyn.
• The final exorcism was lensed in Atlanta, before the film’s opening scenes were shot in the Dominican Republic (which doubled as Haiti).
• In color-design conversations, Green and production designer Brandon Tonner-Connolly discussed movie touchstones, such as Wong Kar-Wai’s lush, romantic classic In the Mood for Love—from which they decided to mirror bright colors.
• To draw inspiration from iconic images of The Exorcist—and challenge his team to live up to the legend—Tonner-Connolly printed out 50 stills from the 1973 masterpiece and arranged them in a grid on his production-office wall.
• For the Haitian scenes that depict the death of Victor’s wife, Sorenne, in the earthquake, the filmmakers identified a “Caribbean green” as a color that stands for danger and urgency. The hue is meant to unnerve when it reappears in a mental institution…and again in Katherine’s house and in Victor and Angela’s home.
• For a key Haiti scene, the special effects department built a curious staircase. Each stair had different small tilts, ones in which a stunt performer could come down and hit different stairs. By doing so, it emulated the steps crumbling during an earthquake. When the earthquake happens, according to stunt coordinator ASHLEY RAE RIDDICK, the floors accordion and the stairs fall apart.
• For the deeply disturbing look of scenes set in a mental institution, the filmmakers were inspired by Children of Darkness, a 1983 Oscar®-nominated documentary featuring unthinkable stories of mentally and emotionally troubled children and young adults. The pain of that narrative’s families was echoed in pain of the fictional parents in The Exorcist: Believer.