I watched that at 2 AM. I did not sleep. Low ratings. Surprise.
The Exorcist was too slow for the Walking Dead crowd, too Catholic for secular viewers, and too grim for network TV. It asked, "What if faith is real, but God is indifferent?" That’s not a tagline for a primetime slot. exorcist 2017
The show earned its R-rating-on-TV moments (head-turning, spider-walking, pea-soup vomit), but the real horror happens at the dinner table. You don’t need CGI for that. Most exorcism media treats the Church as a prop. The Exorcist (2017) treats it as a battlefield. I watched that at 2 AM
And then Fox cancelled it after two seasons. Because of course they did. Surprise
Light a candle. Pour some wine. Say a Hail Mary. And give this unholy masterpiece your time.
But for those of us who stuck around? Season 2 (set in a group home for troubled boys) was even better. More intimate. More brutal. Featuring John Cho as a father desperate to save his son from a demon that feeds on grief. The Exorcist (2017) is not a guilty pleasure. It is a straight-up pleasure. It respects the original film while building something new: a serialized horror novel about the cost of belief.
Without spoiling: a priest gives his last confession while possessed. The demon mimics his dead mother’s voice. The priest absolves himself . Then he walks into a furnace.