The first look at My Best Friend’s Exorcism has officially arrived. On Thursday, Amazon Prime Video revealed the first official trailer for the upcoming film, which is inspired by Grady Hendrix‘s 2016 novel of the same name. The film adaptation, which will debut on the service in late September, will star Eighth Grade‘s Elsie Fisher and Amiah Miller in a bizarre story of demonic possession. The film is directed by Damon Thomas, and also stars Cathy Ang as Glee and Rachel Ogechi Kanu as Margaret. Producers on the project also include Christopher Landon and Ellen Goldsmith-Vein.
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In My Best Friend’s Exorcism, the year is 1988. High school sophomores Abby and Gretchen have been best friends since fourth grade. But after an evening of skinny-dipping goes disastrously wrong, Gretchen begins to act…different. She’s moody. She’s irritable. And bizarre incidents keep happening whenever she’s nearby. Abby’s investigation leads her to some startling discoveries—and by the time their story reaches its terrifying conclusion, the fate of Abby and Gretchen will be determined by a single question: Is their friendship powerful enough to beat the devil?
“In terms of inspiration for My Best Friend’s Exorcism it’s a case of getting the title first and then figuring out the rest later, Roger Corman-style,” Hendrix explained in a 2018 interview with Scifi Pulse. ‘In so many exorcism books and movies, it’s basically the story of some old guys tying a young girl to her bed and yelling at her for hours. The demoniac (possessed person) doesn’t matter. In The Exorcist we don’t know much about Regan because she’s irrelevant to that story, instead it’s about the demon testing the priest’s faith, using the demoniac as a vessel.”
“So I wanted to focus on the experience of the demoniac,” Hendrix continued. “Then, I had to deal with the fact that faith is central to exorcism stories, but I don’t think religious faith is as powerful now as it was in the past, so I had to find something that people would believe in just as strongly, and the obvious answer was their friends. My friends in high school saved my life, more than once, and that age is when friendships are at their strongest, so that meant it had to be set in high school and the high school experience I know best is the one from the Eighties. So the story really came together in a series of logical steps once I thought it through.”
What do you think of the first trailer for My Best Friend’s Exorcism? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!
My Best Friend’s Exorcism will be released on Prime Video on Friday, September 30th.
