"Oddly in harmony" - Mike Flanagan teases how The Exorcist: Martyrs brings two genres into one terrifying mix

The recently released trailer for Mike Flanagan's upcoming supernatural horror film, The Exorcist: Martyrs, introduces single mother and New York City Police Department detective Julie Miller (played by Scarlett Johansson) investigating a string of serial murders connected to 'an evil that goes well beyond the mortal.'

For director Mike Flanagan, the master of contemporary horror best known as the creator of The Haunting of Hill House, Midnight Mass and The Fall of the House of Usher, the terrifying mix of two genres stands out in The Exorcist: Martyrs, which serves as the seventh film in The Exorcist franchise.

Speaking with Empire Magazine, Flanagan noted that he was fascinated with how 'serial killer procedurals' and possession stories often have a similar goal of uncovering the darkness within humanity. Taking inspiration from William Peter Blatty's 1990 The Exorcist III, which expanded on murders rooted in religious beliefs, Martyrs positions itself as a genre-bending story, which brings two genres into one terrifying mix:

“Those two ideas are oddly in harmony with each other. They're both about hunting down and identifying darkness hidden within humanity, and darkness that infiltrates. I'm curious to see how people react.”

The Exorcist: Martyrs - Julie Miller uncovers a chilling pattern of religiously motivated killings

The Exorcist: Martyrs trailer begins with Julie Miller descending a flight of stairs (which is a terrifying image in The Exorcist franchise) to uncover the brutal and bloody murder of a 15-year-old altar boy from the Church, whose body is found upside down on a Cross. The horrific imagery immediately takes Miller back 13 years, when she ended the reign of the infamous Satanic serial killer Rivera/Father Sunday (played by John Leguizamo).

The religiously themed murder of the altar boy sends Miller down a rabbit hole as she investigates some of the most wanted serial killers in history. As Johansson's character says in the trailer, from H.H. Holmes (America's first serial killer) to 'the Night Stalker, Jeffrey Dahmer, Bundy, Gacy, the Son of Sam,' every notable serial killer has one thing in common: they claimed to be possessed by Satan.

This sets the stage for Julie Miller's investigation into the evil in The Exorcist: Martyrs. The trailer hints that Flanagan's upcoming movie skips the typical franchise tropes of a possessed child and operates as a grittier crime mystery connected to the evil.

The evil reaches the Miller house in The Exorcist: Martyrs

A shot from the trailer (Image via YouTube/Universal Pictures)

The terror started by Father Sunday returns as a string of murders that also targets Julie Miller's 12-year-old child, Max (played by Jacobi Jupe). Like any gritty detective story, the darkness of the case slowly penetrates the protagonist's home life, which is what happens with Miller.

The trailer concludes on a chilling note when Miller suspects the evil has likely reached her house. Miller's encounter with the evil makes her suspicious when her son calls her 'Mom,' and she replies:

"I'd appreciate it if you don't call me that."

While The Exorcist: Martyrs trailer concludes with this tease, Flanagan said that the movie will explore the horror in the Miller household:

“I've always believed that horror at home is particularly frightening, because that's where you're meant to be the safest...Miller meets it not with fear, but with interrogation, because it's her job to charge headlong after that kind of darkness."

Martyrs also stars Chiwetel Ejiofor as Father William, Diane Lane as Mary Miller, Sasha Calle as Detective Gina Restrepo, Laurence Fishburne as Father Nichol, and Scoot McNairy as Clay Silver. The cast is rounded out by Hamish Linklater, Alfonso Herrera, Robert Longstreet, Matt Biedel, Samantha Sloyan and Kate Siegel.