10 Horror Movies That Got Scarier YEARS Later

The Exorcist is a rite-of-passage horror movie for many youngsters getting into the genre, and as a result it's a film whose horrors perhaps don't fully resonate until viewing it again with a more mature mindset.

William Friedkin's genre masterpiece may be best remembered for swivelling heads, pea soup vomit, and "The power of Christ compels you!," but it's so, so much more than that.

Thematically, The Exorcist is wholly concerned with crises of faith in a fast-changing America and the terror of protecting one's own child from the unknowable - ideas which will likely pass younger viewers by on an initial watch, but obviously scream loudly when revisiting the film later.

Even though its effects work might seem quaint and its scares even "tame" to modern audiences, The Exorcist is definitely a grower of a horror movie whose icy eeriness sets in like rot and never goes away.