Scarlett Johansson's First Horror Movie Drops Its Full Trailer Today — and the Teaser Is Already Terrifying

In 60 seconds: The full trailer for The Exorcist: Martyrs — Mike Flanagan's new Exorcist film starring Scarlett Johansson as a homicide detective — drops today, Friday October 9. Wednesday's 15-second teaser already showed a detective, a priest, and a satanic serial killer tied to an execution table.

What happened

Scarlett Johansson is finally doing horror. Proper horror.

On Wednesday, Universal Pictures dropped a 15-second teaser for The Exorcist: Martyrs, the new entry in the 50-year-old franchise, written and directed by Mike Flanagan. It's a sizzle reel — barely a quarter of a minute — but it does exactly what a teaser should: it ends with a date. The full trailer lands today, Friday, October 9.

For horror fans, this one's been circled on the calendar for a while. Flanagan is arguably the most trusted name in the genre right now — The Haunting of Hill House, Midnight Mass, Doctor Sleep, The Fall of the House of Usher — and he's taking on the franchise that invented modern horror cinema. No pressure.

Latest verified facts

Here's what the teaser actually shows, frame by frame:

The setup: Johansson plays Detective Julie Miller, a homicide cop investigating murders with a supernatural thread. The teaser opens on a woman standing at the top of a staircase, then cuts to Johansson sweeping a flashlight through a dark basement. A priest leads a church service. Then the money shot: a man strapped to an execution table, surrounded by law enforcement.

The cast: Chiwetel Ejiofor plays the priest, John Leguizamo plays the satanic serial killer — reportedly seen tied to a bed in the teaser — and the ensemble runs deep: Laurence Fishburne, Diane Lane, Sasha Calle, Rahul Kohli, Carla Gugino, plus Flanagan regulars Kate Siegel and Samantha Sloyan, and young Jacobi Jupe as a terrified kid.

The story: Per early details shared with Esquire, Miller apprehends a serial killer operating under the name Father Sunday and witnesses his execution. The execution doesn't go as planned — and that's when the horror starts. Flanagan told the magazine he wanted the film to "stand on its own two legs, encapsulating a brand-new plotline with brand-new characters." It's inspired by 1990's The Exorcist III, the cult-favorite sequel, rather than a direct continuation.

The dates: Teaser — October 7, 2026. Full trailer — today, October 9, 2026. Theatrical release — March 12, 2027.

The Johansson factor: This is her first genuine horror film. Her résumé has flirted with the genre — the 2002 horror-comedy Eight Legged Freaks, the sci-fi chiller Under the Skin (2013) — but she's never headlined a straight horror movie. Going from Black Widow and Jurassic World to a possessed-killer thriller is a swing, and it's exactly the kind of swing that gets people talking.

Why it matters

Let's be honest about the Exorcist franchise: it's been running on fumes for decades.

The original 1973 film is a monument — still arguably the scariest mainstream movie ever made. Everything since has been diminishing returns, bottoming out with 2023's The Exorcist: Believer, which tried to launch a whole trilogy and face-planted so hard the trilogy got scrapped. That's why this reboot matters: it's not a sequel to a sequel. It's a reset, handed to the one filmmaker whose name alone makes horror fans preorder tickets.

Flanagan's track record is the whole pitch. He took Stephen King's "unfilmable" Doctor Sleep and made it sing. He turned a Netflix miniseries budget into Hill House, which people still argue is the best horror of the decade. If anyone can make the Exorcist name mean something again, it's the guy who treats horror like literature instead of a theme-park ride.

Impact on the USA and the world

For American moviegoers, today's trailer is the starting gun on a five-month marketing runway to March 2027 — expect this to dominate horror conversation through Halloween and beyond. Universal is clearly betting that Flanagan + Johansson is the combo that finally cracks the franchise's 50-year curse of bad sequels.

For the industry, it's another data point in horror's remarkable run as Hollywood's most reliable genre. While $200 million blockbusters keep underperforming, mid-budget horror keeps printing money — and studios keep handing their crown-jewel IP to auteur directors instead of committee filmmakers. If Martyrs works, expect more legacy franchises to get the "give it to a real filmmaker" treatment.

And for everyone else: a 15-second teaser with a woman on a staircase, a flashlight in a basement, and a man strapped to a table is doing exactly what 15 seconds should do. Today's full trailer will tell us whether there's a real movie behind the mood.

What happens next

Today's trailer is the moment of truth for the marketing. The teaser was all atmosphere — no dialogue, no plot, just dread. The full trailer has to sell the story: who is Father Sunday, what goes wrong at the execution, and why Detective Miller can't just walk away. If Universal's holding back the scares, that's usually a good sign. If the trailer shows everything, worry.

Then the long game: five months of posters, featurettes, and a Halloween-season push, building to March 12, 2027. Flanagan's currently got his Carrie series out on Prime Video, so he's about to own horror discourse on both the big and small screen at once.

My read: the teaser did its job — I'm thinking about that staircase shot more than I'd like to admit. But the Believer disaster means nobody gets the benefit of the doubt here, not even Flanagan. Today's trailer has to prove this is a movie, not just a mood. We'll be watching.

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