Why Exorcist Believer Makes Sense for Horror Unleashed

So I was listening to the newest episode of HHN 365 (great podcast, please don't take this as condemnation because it's not meant to be) and the hosts were talking about how Exorcist: Believer doesn't fit at Horror Unleashed in Vegas, the new HHN experience opening later this year. Their reasons were pretty familiar, mostly centering around the fact that the movie wasn't good and although the HHN house is generally regarded as very good, no one (or basically no one) is going to look at the ads for Horror Unleashed and say "wow, I really want to go to see the 2023 Exorcist sequel/reboot as a haunted house". I can't argue much about that logic. The movie is a dead end, destined to fade into cultural obscurity. But... I do think that this was a good pickup for HHN. Let me tell you why!

To best explain it, let's take a look at the opposite. If you're reading this, you probably are a massive HHN fan, and at least a casual horror fan but more likely a big fan. I'm sure you know all about Halloween III and that it specifically is meant to be the first of the Halloween anthology series with no Michael Myers. Let's imagine you don't know that. Instead you see that Halloween III is on the website for Horror Unleashed. You don't see Michael Myers on the site but you know that Halloween IS Michael Myers so you don't have any reason to believe that he won't be there! Imagine your disappointment if MM being at the event is a driving factor for you to go when you walk through the Halloween III house and see a bunch of slashers in Halloween masks but nothing in the iconic MM mask. That would be disappointing! I'm confident that the license for Halloween III is less than other Halloweens for that reason, less demand. I'm sure it must be tempting for events to use the name to draw people in and pocket the difference in licensing. But that's a bad experience for guests.

Now let's apply that same logic to Exorcist vs Exorcist: Believer. Along the same line, the licensing for Believer is likely to be much less than the original Exorcist since that sequel is a cultural dead end. When a non horror fan thinks of Exorcist, the original, what do they think of? The character's name? Probably not. They probably think of a priest and a little girl that vomits and her head spins; maybe the worried parent looking on? You know what movie also features a priest, a little girl that vomits and her head spins and a concerned parent (how about 2 of the middle and 4 of the latter)? Exorcist: Believer!

Now you can probably see where I'm coming from. Believer was such a dead end that I don't think the average person associates it as much with the 2023 movie and instead still loosely with the first, culturally significant movie. Because of that, advertising Believer will still draw based on the Exorcist name alone. And unlike the Halloween III case, when guests walk though, they're likely going to see a (two) little girl(s) that vomit all over the place and have spinning heads and they're going to run into a priest and they're going to run into the demon possessing the girls. They're going to get just what they expected and hoped for from an Exorcist house! So from my perspective (and Universal's), that's a win-win and likely in my opinion to be why it was selected.

No your first thought reading that might be, "we'll that might be true but what about Texas Chainsaw Massacre? Why not just use TCM 2 or 3 or... that's almost certainly cheaper than the original" And you're totally right about that, I can't totally justify that. Maybe the licensing is different? Or just cheaper in general? I can't really speak for things there, just my opinion about why Exorcist Believer was selected!