Mike Flanagan's The Exorcist Won't Have One Of His Usual Director Trademarks [ATX Festival]

It was announced last month that Mike Flanagan, beloved horror auteur behind such titles as "The Haunting of Hill House" and "Doctor Sleep," will be the latest filmmaker to hear the calling, wear the collar, and be compelled by the power of Christ to direct a new "Exorcist" movie.

The last "Exorcist" movie we got, David Gordon Green's "The Exorcist: Believer," was a bit of a mess, with Green's planned "Exorcist" trilogy crashing before takeoff (almost as badly as a Boeing flight). Can Flanagan rescue the franchise? More importantly, which Flanagan-isms can we expect from his take on "The Exorcist?" Will the movie be emotional and tear-jerking? Probably. Will it feature at least a few of his regular collaborators? Very likely. Will it give us another lengthy monologue or two? Turns out, it likely won't.

Flanagan discussed his "Exorcist" plans during the "Monologue Case Study With Mike Flanagan" panel at ATX last week, which /Film's own Ryan Scott was able to attend. Therein, the storyteller explained that his movie probably won't include all that many illusions to the 1973 horror classic that started it all. After all, Blumhouse and Universal are giving the film a theatrical release, and with younger audiences driving the box office, they're unlikely to be impressed by allusions to a 50-year-old movie. 

When discussing his early conversations with Universal/Blumhouse, Flanagan recalled saying, "I don't think this is a monologue project." Granted, as he pointed out, the exorcism ritual itself (a lengthy recital of scripture) is kind of a monologue. However, when it comes to philosophical speeches about religion, horror, and death, Flanagan said, "I already got it out of my system."

Instead, audiences should expect his film to "just be really scary," he added, promising that the characters will still be "real and emotional and relevant."

The monologue is a recognizable element of Mike Flanagan's style, but the storyteller admitted that he gets constant pushback for doing them, which is ridiculous. Indeed, the monologue best exemplifies what makes Flanagan's style so unique within the horror sphere. The monologue and soliloquy are more than just delivery methods for profound themes and emotionally devastating moments; they are also "art forms in and of themselves," as Flanagan put it. And let there be no doubt, Flanagan's powers in writing monologues reached their apex with "Midnight Mass," his masterpiece and a horror show packed with raw, memorable, moving monologues about faith, grief, and death.

Though it's sad we won't see them in the next "Exorcist" movie, Flanagan's brand of horror, which focuses primarily on character relationships and emotion, feels fitting for this particular horror franchise. As much as the vomiting, the chanting about "the power of Christ," and the levitating are remembered, the thing that makes the original "Exorcist" the scariest movie of all time (not to mention, one of the horror genre's biggest box office success stories) is that, at its core, it's a simple story about a loving mother trying desperately to help her daughter — and having no idea how to do so — as she endures what appears to be a mysterious illness, yet slowly reveals itself to be something else altogether.

The next "Exorcist" film has yet to set an official release date.