“The Exorcist: Believer” Director David Gordon Green discusses his fascination with religion and the research he has put into this film to create its story arc. Director David Gordon Green also talks about the difference between a horror film and a slasher movie in his interview. Check it out.
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00:00 I've grown up with a fascination of religions of all sorts, and when I see a movie that
00:05 has a religious theme, I'm always really triggered by that and wondering about that and often
00:11 read more about it or research it.
00:13 And this was an opportunity to take a lot of different perspectives of possession and
00:19 explore it through a variety of characters and their perspective of religion.
00:25 So as you can imagine, being a steward of this title, people pick up the phone.
00:29 And so my research began as curiosity, naive curiosity, wondering various religious perspectives
00:37 on possession and various rituals and ceremonies that paralleled the demonic universe that
00:44 we were exploring.
00:46 And then it was a chance to talk to academics and priests of all sorts and be recommended
00:52 books to read when I met Ellen Burstyn for the first time.
00:56 She had an amazing journey for the last 50 years in the wake of the success of this film
01:02 with people bringing her stories, with people telling her their experience and sharing.
01:07 And in a lot of ways, the evolution of this project began with some of my inspiration
01:15 from Ellen and her real-life story.
01:19 In my initial research of this film and the narrative we were sculpting, I found cases
01:24 of up to five in a synchronized possession.
01:27 So up to five accounts of five people that were dealing with possession from an entity
01:34 that felt related among the five.
01:37 And for me, that was exciting because I thought, okay, now I can explore all these different
01:40 perspectives of how you would deal with it differently.
01:44 If it was your child, then I would deal with it, then she would deal with it, or he would
01:47 deal with it.
01:48 And so this became, to me, part of the conflict of the movie is if our children are possessed
01:55 by the same entity and you think about things differently than I do, how do we work together
01:59 to free these kids of this being?
02:03 When Ellen Burstyn walks on set, I'm in the presence of Hollywood royalty.
02:07 So I get goose bumps.
02:09 I get excited about what we're going to create together.
02:16 Very quickly she makes you comfortable, she cracks a joke, and all of a sudden you're
02:19 just there with a collaborator.
02:21 You're there with a sparring partner.
02:23 You invite Leslie Odom Jr., you invite Jennifer Nettles and Norbert Leo Butz and Ann Dowd,
02:29 and we're in the room talking through who these characters are and what this world is
02:35 and where are we right now.
02:37 And so many of those things that start to be fleshed out when you've put this ensemble
02:43 together and you start blocking out the reality and logistics of your movie.
02:48 So Leslie plays the character Victor Fielding and early in the film we see that Victor loses
02:55 his wife, his pregnant wife, and then we fast forward 13 years later and we pick up the
03:04 story of Victor and his daughter Angela.
03:07 And at this point Angela is everything to Victor.
03:10 Victor lives a very isolated life.
03:13 He doesn't connect too great to his community, to his neighbors.
03:18 He's put church and faith behind him and he puts everything he has into the protective
03:25 relationship and world of he and his daughter.
03:29 And that's where our story steps in is challenging that and challenging living.
03:35 One of the things I love about the original Exorcist is it starts in this exotic locale
03:41 and in these curious characters.
03:43 It's very ambiguous as to what's going on, but it's captivating.
03:47 It's rhythmic.
03:48 It's mysterious.
03:50 And then it steps away from that introduction and into a relatable, real-life, recognizable
03:56 modern-day world.
03:58 And that was one of the ingredients in the original film that I thought would be smart
04:04 to take to our film.
04:06 Show us a place that's not our everyday world, but show how that affects some characters
04:10 and then let's step, in our case we step forward in time several years and then find our relatable
04:18 modern-day world.
04:21 In my mind, a Halloween movie is a movie that jumps up and stabs you.
04:26 An Exorcist movie creeps under your skin and gets you.
04:32 So it's a very different, a demonic possession movie is a very different sub-genre of horror
04:39 than a slasher movie.
04:41 We're not the boogeyman.
04:43 We're not afraid of the dark.
04:45 This is a movie about real-life drama that gets, escalates to a point of absolute mind-blowing
04:54 horror.
04:55 I think this movie is asking a lot about belief.
04:59 It's asking a lot about placebos, the power of suggestion, about faith, where you come
05:05 from and what you're willing to believe if you think that that's the step toward healing.
05:12 And so every character, no matter how devout they have, are within the story here, are
05:18 challenged by their faith, challenged by their belief.
05:22 And then ultimately, that's a quality also that can unite.