Infernal Affairs

Well, spooky season rolls on, and so do I. Last night I revisited The Exorcist III (1990), directed by William Peter Blatty and adapted from his own 1983 novel Legion. It’s one of my favorite horror movies, although I’m not sure exactly where it ranks. Pretty highly, anyway. It’s certainly my favorite Exorcist film besides the original, directed by William Friedkin and adapted from Blatty’s earlier novel.

I know there have been attempts to rehabilitate John Boorman’s Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977), including a recent documentary about its troubled production and critical and commercial failure. But that’s not what I’m here to talk about.

The Exorcist III features a fantastic late-period George C. Scott as Lieutenant William F. Kinderman, a cranky, chatty, eccentric homicide detective investigating gruesome ritual murders. Although commercial pressures led Blatty to emphasize the scares, the movie retains much of Legion’s philosophical banter and police procedural flavor.

This all feels relevant, as the first trailer for Mike Flanagan’s The Exorcist: Martyrs recently dropped, revealing an apparent connection to Blatty’s film. That tickles my fancy because I’ve generally been pro-Flanagan, who has a particular talent for theological horror. But given the franchise’s dismal sequel history, I’m only cautiously optimistic.

Kinderman is hardly the first investigator whose day job intersects with the supernatural. The literary canon includes, among others, Algernon Blackwood’s psychic physician Dr. John Silence (1908) and William Hope Hodgson’s Thomas Carnacki, from Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder (1913). In comics, there’s John Constantine, the chain-smoking occult investigator introduced by Alan Moore in Swamp Thing (1985), who later got his own series, Hellblazer (1988).

Television has its own memorable examples, including one of my favorites. Darren McGavin played Carl Kolchak in the TV movies The Night Stalker (1972) and The Night Strangler (1973), followed by the series Kolchak: The Night Stalker (1974–75). This rumpled, wisecracking reporter keeps stumbling into supernatural crimes nobody in authority wants to acknowledge. Kolchak is a known influence on Chris Carter’s The X-Files (1993), which famously featured FBI agents as modern occult detectives.

Kinderman surely belongs in this company. The character first appeared in Friedkin’s film, played by Lee J. Cobb, and was a friend of Father Damien Karras (Jason Miller). A seasoned investigator with a skeptic’s eye and a theologian’s heart, Kinderman finds himself confronting murders whose implications extend well beyond ordinary police work.

Scott brilliantly portrays an investigator whose evidence increasingly conflicts with his understanding of reality. Kinderman also carries tremendous grief, first over Karras and then another priest friend, Father Joseph Dyer, murdered by the film’s Gemini Killer. He’s cantankerous, melancholy, and more often than not, somewhat overwhelmed. Blatty trusts the character to convey this weight without over-explaining via trauma dump.

Which brings me to Flanagan, who can be considerably less subtle. The Haunting of Hill House (2018) was amazing, The Haunting of Bly Manor (2020) less so, and Midnight Mass (2021) probably his peak. But his tendency to turn horror into psychological explication seems to have grown more pronounced with success. His latest adaptation of Stephen King’s Carrie for Amazon substantially changes the central character while playing like a heavy-handed CW show. Lately I’ve come to think of Flanagan as the Zack Snyder of trauma narratives—too often on the nose and off the plot.

Taking inspiration from The Exorcist III might allow Flanagan to rein in his excesses while playing to his strengths. Blatty doesn’t shy away from theology or explanation, but nevertheless maintains a grounded reality in which sinister and inexplicable events unfold. The humor, sadness, and horror coexist without becoming overly dependent on genre tropes (though there are monologues, which will be a natural fit for Flanagan).

The Martyrs trailer contains some intriguing Easter eggs, including references to Kinderman. Fans speculate that Scarlett Johansson’s detective Julie Miller might be his daughter, who appears in The Exorcist III. Despite Flanagan describing the film as a standalone story, these connections suggest it could be a stealth sequel. Oh, and John Leguizamo is in it, along with Chiwetel Ejiofor and Laurence Fishburne as priests. A strong cast can compensate for a multitude of sins.

Part of the pleasure of the occult detective is watching someone pursue a mystery that refuses to play by the rules. Kinderman brings all the habits of a seasoned investigator to a case in which the evidence only makes things creepier. That’s the vibe I hope Flanagan preserves in Exorcist: Martyrs. I’ll be buying a ticket, though I reserve the right to complain as much as any weary gumshoe.