3. The Exorcist (1973)
Imagine pitching The Exorcist today.
“Okay, so there's a young girl, she's possessed, things get extremely disturbing, and we're going to spend a lot of time making audiences uncomfortable.”
That part is easy.
The difficult part is capturing the cultural impact of the original.
When The Exorcist arrived in 1973, audiences weren't accustomed to seeing something quite like it. The movie treated its supernatural subject matter with an unusually serious tone while presenting genuinely shocking imagery.
A modern audience has seen everything.
We've had decades of possession movies, television shows, special effects, internet horror and increasingly elaborate supernatural creatures.
You could absolutely make a terrifying possession movie today.
But making audiences feel like they're watching something they have never seen before?
That's the real challenge.
