I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but turns out FOX's The Exorcist is just another dumb Blumhouse movie, with a wasted Geena Davis to boot. Here's the new promo, which tries to scare us by flinging a CGI bird into a window:
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Is anyone surprised this thing looks bad? The writing was on the wall from the moment the project was first announced, and the promo only confirms my worst fears about it. While it wouldn't be fair to judge the show based on two and a half minutes of footage, this thing screams “Insidious sequel” to me (not a compliment).
What I don't get is that The Exorcist was a very specific story based on a very specific case, and this series posits an entirely new demonic possession scenario, albeit one with very similar contours to the 1971 book and William Friedkin's film adaptation. So why not just call it something else? The answer to that question is pretty simple — The Exorcist is a pre-existing brand, which gives FOX a leg up on building an audience — but the shallowness of the enterprise is so clear from the promo I doubt very many people will fall for it.
It this thing turns out to be as lame as I anticipate, it'll be the third (and arguably final) classic Satanic horror film of the late '60s and '70s to suffer an underwhelming TV adaptation in only two years, after 2014's Rosemary's Baby miniseries and this year's Omen sequel series Damien.