The leaked plot for The Exorcist: Martyrs has a police detective, a serial killer she put away 13 years ago, a new string of murders tied to the old case, and priests pulled into the investigation.
If that sounds familiar, it should. It’s the setup of The Exorcist III.
And Mike Flanagan has said the 1990 film is a big reason why.
The plot details come from scooper Daniel Richtman (full character and plot breakdown here) and haven’t been confirmed by Universal.
Kinderman vs. the Gemini Killer, 15 Years Later
Written and directed by William Peter Blatty, the author of the original novel, The Exorcist III picks up 15 years after the events of the first film.
George C. Scott plays Lt. William Kinderman, the Georgetown detective from the original, now investigating a series of murders that copy the methods of the Gemini Killer, a serial killer executed 15 years earlier.
The trail leads to a psychiatric ward and a patient who claims to be the Gemini Killer, alive inside the body of Father Karras (Jason Miller), with Brad Dourif playing the killer.
One of the victims is Kinderman’s friend, Father Dyer (Ed Flanders). In the finale, Father Morning (Nicol Williamson) walks into the ward to perform an exorcism.
The movie got mixed reviews in 1990 and has since become a cult favorite, with plenty of fans calling it the best of the sequels. Its hospital hallway jump scare is on every list.
Johansson’s Detective Is the New Kinderman
Now line that up with the Martyrs leak.
Scarlett Johansson plays a police detective and single mother. Kinderman was the detective.
John Leguizamo’s Father Sunday is the notorious satanic serial killer she took down 13 years before the movie starts. The Gemini Killer was executed 15 years before The Exorcist III.
The new murders in Martyrs are connected to her past. The Georgetown murders in The Exorcist III copy the Gemini Killer’s methods.
Priests are wrapped up in both cases. Chiwetel Ejiofor plays one connected to the investigation, and in The Exorcist III, Kinderman’s friend Father Dyer becomes a victim and Father Karras turns up in the psych ward.
Laurence Fishburne plays the priest who performs the exorcism. That was Father Morning’s job.
Both movies also give the franchise something it rarely has: a human villain.
When The Hollywood Reporter announced Leguizamo’s casting in March, JoBlo pointed out how rare a human antagonist is in an exorcism movie. The Exorcist III is the exception, with Dourif’s Gemini Killer.
The one big difference is who gets possessed. In The Exorcist III, it’s Karras’s body. In Martyrs, it’s the detective’s 12-year-old son, Max.
So Martyrs combines the cop-and-killer story of The Exorcist III with the possessed child of the 1973 original.
Flanagan Called The Exorcist III “Ripe To Be Explored Further”
Flanagan has said as much himself. He has name-checked The Exorcist III as a major inspiration for his movie.
“It has some ideas that I think are just ripe to be explored further,” Flanagan said (via Yahoo Entertainment), adding that he loves the movie and that its hospital hallway sequence might be the best jump scare in film history.
Flanagan has also said his film is not a sequel to Believer or anything else, and that his goal is a movie that rhymes with the 1973 original without trying to replace it.
The Exorcist III is the sequel that came closest to doing that. Per the leak, Martyrs is built on the same bones.
The Exorcist: Martyrs hits theaters March 12, 2027.
