'The Exorcism's Joshua John Miller taps his family's cinema roots for horror rebellion
Joshua John Miller's The Exorcism, which he co-wrote with partner M.A. Fortin, is not your average summer scare-'em-up. Instead, it's a spiky subversion of the possession subgenre, a talky psychological drama starring Russell Crowe as a washed-up actor attempting to make a comeback with a remake of an unnamed exorcism movie — that sure sounds a lot like The Exorcist. Anthony Miller (Crowe) is also trying to reconnect with his queer teen daughter, Lee (Ryan Simpkins). But can Lee forgive him when he seems to be off the wagon yet again? Or is there something far more devilish at work here?
In an interview with Mashable, Fortin and Miller shared about their battle to keep The Exorcism queer, the personal origins that inspired the film, and why they don't believe in the curse of The Exorcist.
The Exorcism was born from Miller's family legacy.
Credit: Vertical Entertainment
Exorcism stories are a dime a dozen these days, from the endless Exorcist sequels to Evil's recurring possession plotlines. But if there's a filmmaker who could put a unique spin on the subgenre, it's director Joshua John Miller, who has been steeping in cult cinema since he was in utero.
Miller's father was Jason Miller, who made a splash as Father Karras in The Exorcist and regaled his young son with tales from the set. His mother, Susan Bernard, was a B-movie icon, with starring roles in films like the seminal Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! and fans that include Quentin Tarantino. While Bernard inspired Miller and Fortin's script for 2015's The Final Girls, a deliciously nostalgia-soaked horror comedy that recalls Miller's own experience watching his mom as a scream queen, Jason Miller's legacy proved a pricklier point of inspiration.
As Miller explained, "I think, with this particular story, it's not like The Final Girls ... the relationship with my mom was not as complicated, whereas with my dad, it was far more fraught. And I think in certain ways, his own 'possessions and demons' were a lot darker and a lot harder for him to reconcile."
Although Jason Miller was rightfully lauded by critics and movie lovers for his performance as the harrowed Father Karras, he failed to achieve similar heights when he adapted and directed his own Pulitzer Prize–winning play, That Championship Season, for the big screen. Instead, the elder Miller found refuge in local theater productions. But he appeared in a few movies, including William Peter Blatty's tormented The Exorcist 3, before dying at the relatively young age of 62 in 2001. It is a legacy that's also influenced Joshua's half-brother, Jason Patric, who performed in a Broadway revival of That Championship Season in 2011.
For his part, as a child, Miller appeared in the trippy slasher Halloween III: Season of the Witch and the punkest vampire Western this side of the Pecos, Kathryn Bigelow's Near Dark, in which he played a feral pint-sized fanger named Homer. And, as TikTok won't let us forget, he was also the campy little brother in Teen Witch, a performance, he told Peaches Christ and Michael Varrati in a recent episode of their Midnight Mass podcast, was inspired by Bette Davis in Now, Voyager and Gena Rowlands in A Woman Under the Influence. In an oddly sweet nod to Near Dark, Miller's co-star Adrian Pasdar has a devilishly good pre-credits cameo in The Exorcism.
Turning the tables on the gender roles of possession movies was the way in for Miller and Fortin.
Credit: Vertical Entertainment
The Exorcist, and many other possession movies over, present a damsel in (devilish) distress, with a man — often a Catholic priest — rushing into save her. However, The Exorcism centers not on Anthony (who can be viewed as a stand-in for Miller's own father) but the character's daughter, Lee Miller (Ryan Simpkins), who is still reeling from the death of her mother — and her father's public fall from grace. Lee's also falling for Anthony's co-star, Blake (Chloe Bailey), who is the stand-in for Linda Blair. Their relationship is sweet and untroubled, and together, the two teens set out to help save Tony from whatever demons he's facing.
Focusing the story on Lee and Blake was the key for both Miller and Fortin. "The kind of genre that we always gravitated toward was more female-forward," Fortin explained, "Women driving the action, women being the ones trying to figure out their own destiny, women just being the heroes. Possession movies — or at least most possession movies — historically are mostly about female subjugation, women being defenseless creatures." By making their women the center of the story, the collaborators inherently drew on some of Miller's own experiences as a child growing up near the Hollywood spotlight.
However, pulling from his own life means doing press about the movie can be painful. "I didn't realize what I was getting myself into," Miller said, adding, "Not just the making of a movie — and that Herculean effort — but even just doing press about the movie… Let's talk about your dead father for 12 hours every day. Let's talk about alcoholism for 12 hours every day, you know? Let's talk about addictions; let's talk about all of the sorts of things that you would probably save for your therapist."
Did Joshua John Miller have to confront The Exorcist curse?
Credit: Vertical Entertainment
Almost as old as the 1973 film is the fan theory that it was cursed. Miller doesn't fall prey to those sorts of superstitions. "I don't believe in that stuff," he said, concisely. However, that doesn't mean filmmaking isn't a sort of deal with the devil, in and of itself.
"What I do believe is that evil exists in people, and I think that making movies is always a complicated game," Miller explained. "In the Hollywood movie system, you're always in strange negotiation with various elements, people who are probably morally compromised. It's just the nature of the world we're in, right? And I think that the only cursed experiences I really had during this — were with some of the people I had to work with in the process."
Miller noted he had to battle to keep in the queer love story between Lee and Blake and to maintain the psychological element. He noted there was pressure to turn his film into "a more sort of typical exorcism movie," adding, "These sorts of eternal struggles with a studio were the parts that were the most challenging. Not any kind of woo-woo magical thing happening on the set."
When the conversation turned to the rise of studio-made horror and its flood of remakes, Miller said, "Horror used to be a really transgressive space. It was not commodified by the studio system. It was not run by people looking for money..."
Here, Fortin interjected, "It was like porn—"
Miller agreed: "It was taboo. And suddenly what's happened is that some smart people, some also really brilliant, creative people, have found a way to commercialize a queer space, an underground space, a space for the kids outside smoking the cigarettes, doing bad things. And now horror has become this Marvelverse." He lamented horror being dumbed down to go mainstream to "get the most people in," continuing, "It's bullshit, because it's defanged."
Miller yearns for "the B[-movie] element of horror that's dirty and messy and doesn't necessarily work as a whole as well, but it's got cool elements, and then like weird, uncomfortable trauma stuff, like these are the things that kept it queer and strange and off the grid." He concluded, "[Horror cinema has] been commodified and neutered, and like everything in [the film industry], everything's bottom-line — money, money, money, money."
The Exorcism is now streaming on Amazon Prime.
UPDATE: Jul. 8, 2024, 3:30 p.m. EDT This article was originally published on June 21, 2024. It has been updated to include information about the film's digital release.
