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Despite multiple red herrings, clues, and characters like Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn) blaming Pazuzu for the dual possessions haunting The Exorcist: Believer, the entity responsible is actually a very different demonic figure from Mesopotamian lore: Lamashtu.
While the demon can be barely glimpsed in a quick flash on screen, makeup effects co-designers Chris Nelson and Vincent Van Dyke give a closer look at their stellar work via Instagram.
The Exorcist: Believer, now available on Digital, frequently makes callbacks and ties to the original film by writer William Peter Blatty and director William Friedkin. Moreover, it frequently alludes to Pazuzu as the one behind the mysterious disappearance, reappearance, and subsequent possessions of young girls Angela (Lidya Jewett) and Katherine (Olivia O’Neill). It seems reasonable that the demon first encountered by Father Merrin (Max von Sydow) might be back thanks to frequent references and calls for “Mother” and a seemingly intimate familiarity with Chris MacNeil. Director David Gordon Green, who co-wrote the screenplay with Peter Sattler from a story by Scott Teems (Halloween Kills) & Danny McBride (Halloween trilogy), seems to intentionally keep the mythology vague, however, never fully explaining the demon’s presence or intent at all.
Spoilers ahead for the film’s finale: The closest we come to getting a feel for the demon’s presence comes during the climactic exorcism when the parents of both girls are forced to choose in a deceitful misdirect. The impulsive choice of one dooms Katherine to Hell, and a rapidly cut, abstract sequence gives flashes of the demons dragging her down to the pits.
In other words, if you blinked during this moment, you likely missed a glimpse of Lamashtu (Lize Johnston), the actual culprit responsible.
Nelson recently told Polygon in an interview, “You see [Lamashtu] very abstractly in the final exorcism. But we did an entire head-to-toe prosthetic suit, harness, wings, horns, a full realization of Lamashtu, which I’m very, very proud of and was very difficult. It was five and a half hours of makeup in, about an hour and a half makeup out, including a 12-hour shoot day.”
Not only is it a shame to barely see Nelson and Van Dyke’s work on screen, but the mythology behind the entity also feels wasted in The Exorcist: Believer.
In folklore, Lamashtu was a female demon that terrorized women during childbirth. Newborns were counted among her favorite foods. Aside from being a menace to pregnant women, Lamashtu also happened to be Pazuzu’s rival. The Met describes Pazuzu as the protective shield and defense against the vile Lamashtu.
None of that makes it into The Exorcist: Believer. While it remains to be seen if Green was waiting to flesh out (pun intended) Lamashtu in the sequel, at least we can admire the SFX work into bringing the unseen character to life through the images below.