Considering it was New York City Comic Con this past weekend in the United States, it’s been a weirdly quiet week for pop culture news (though you can find Marvel’s upcoming animated plans for Disney+ here). So we’re just going to spotlight two movie trailers that caught our eye over the past seven days. And seeing that we’re in Halloween month, it’s appropriate that they’re both of a spooky nature – and weirdly both feature blonde women in law enforcement revisiting key events from their past.
First up is The Exorcist: Martyrs, from horror master Mike Flanagan (The Haunting of Hill House, Doctor Sleep, Hush, Midnight Mass, Prime Video’s Carrie). A wholly new franchise revival after the failure of 2023’s The Exorcist: Believer, this seventh Exorcist film marries supernatural and serial killer evil. Flanagan writes and directs.
Scarlett Johansson heads up the cast as New York City detective Julie Miller, who thirteen years ago ended the brutal murder spree of satanic serial killer Father Sunday (John Leguizamo). In the present, though, after a new murderer writes her name in blood at a church crime scene, Miller discovers a disturbing link between some of the most vicious serial killers of history. She’s aided by Chiwetel Ejiofor’s former prison chaplain and Sasha Calle’s rookie detective. The rest of the all-star cast includes Diane Lane, Scoot McNairy, Gil Bellows and Laurence Fishburne.
The Exorcist: Martyrs comes to cinemas on 12 March.
We’ve got a while to wait for The Exorcist: Martyrs, but that isn’t the same for The Cycle. This horror thriller is releasing to horror streamer Shudder on 23 October with attention-grabbing praise from Stephen King, who calls the film, “The Thing meets The Silence of the Lambs.” The premise is a grisly, but intriguing one. When the body of a man missing for thirty-six years is discovered at the scene of a horrific crime, it’s up to his estranged daughter (Daredevil and Laufey’s Deborah Ann Woll) to unravel what happened. The film is receiving high praise for its practical effects.
The only issue for people keen to watch The Cycle legally is that it is a Shudder exclusive, and that service is limited to a select few global markets.