In an interview with IndieWire, Prior explained the “trickery” that went into one of the episode’s most jarring shots, angled upside-down, in which Elliott’s possessed corpse explains its plans through a stiff set of lips. The filmmaker says that several small effects went into creating the off-putting visual, including one trick straight out of “The Exorcist” rulebook. “There’s a throwaway double exposure in ‘The Exorcist’ that always creeped the hell out of me,” Prior told the outlet. “It’s a combination of Linda Blair and Eileen Dietz, who was the makeup stand-in/Pazuzu face.”
The shot he’s describing are among the most memorable in the traumatizing 1973 film, despite only appearing for a split second. In it, the white, haunting face of Pazuzu appears in a quick flash during a scene in which Regan’s being exorcised. “They did this really dirty split comp of those two faces together,” Prior describes. “Somewhere that was probably in the back of my mind that if we froze part of Luke’s face and let the other part keep talking, you would get some uncanny oddness to it.” The filmmaker says the team achieved the freaky look by making Elliott’s eyes appear unblinking. “There were a couple of times where I froze his eyes,” he shared, “And it just created a kind of weird, unnerving feel.”