Mike Schulz talks with Dave Levora and Darren Pitra beforehand about how Linda Blair has separated herself from her former profession — and, given the reviews of The Exorcist: Believer, that can’t be anything other than a good thing for all concerned — before getting into The Creator, directed by Gareth Edwards of Rogue One fame (or infamy, depending on your feelings about it). This is a film that neither man in our trio had heard of before; you may recall that The Creator didn’t surface in their discussion of previews last week. Budgeted at $80 million, The Creator took Schulz completely by surprise as to its quality, comparing it to Blade Runner and Avatar (more the look than the specific concepts, which in this case Greig Fraser and Oren Soffer can share credit on the cinematography). Starring John David Washington, Gemma Chan, Ken Watanabe, Sturgill Simpson, Allison Janney, and Madeleine Yuna Voyles, the film concerns a world in which man’s paranoia about AI created a conflict that seemed inevitable but was preventable, and millions have perished for that lack of insight. Schulz’s enthusiasm may owe to the fact that AI is something that everyone’s talking about at the moment, and the paranoia of the film has its real-world parallels, but The Creator sounds like it succeeds at all levels. Will its box office reflect such an achievement? So far, it’s earned $37 million against budget, but it may get more buzz with the passing weeks. As for Saw X, directed by Kevin Greutert and starring Tobin Bell, Synnøve Macody Lund, Steven Brand, Renata Vaca, and Michael Beach, Schulz thought it the best of the franchise, but more owing to the inevitability of another Saw film than any heavy statements, be they aesthetic or ethical or what-have-you. The key word for the tenth film is “compactness.” Set between the first and second Saw films, John Kramer/Jigsaw (Bell, 81 years old) is visiting Mexico in hopes of a cure for his cancer. Once he wises up quickly to the incredible scam of it all, he decides to introduce the araneros to his sense of justice. This is the sort of horror film that avoids the epithet “torture porn” because the antagonists are such outright pieces of excrement and thus seen as deserving of their fates — except that, in this particular equation, Jigsaw’s elaborate punishments might be mistaken as biblical exercises, Old Testament-style, with none of the underlying problematic nihilism of the vengeance schemes of, say, The Abominable Dr Phibes (1971). Moving on, Levora notes that The Exorcist: Believer was set to be released the same day as Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour. How big is Taylor Swift at this point in time, asks Levora? “She’s taking on the Devil! And she’s winning!” Since every other film has been scheduled not to coincide with Swift’s latest concert film, it seems an especially inopportune moment for yet another Exorcist film to drop — particularly when the majority of the reviews are providing variations on “hellishly awful.” This will be the sixth Exorcist film (with two more on the way) where the only worthwhile film has been the 1973 original, so we shouldn’t ascribe supernatural powers to Swift just yet. And with those sage words, we greet the month of October. Let loose the Krakens!

“The Creator” and “Saw X”