Crew
Director/Screenplay/Producer – Ashley Hays Wright, Music – Wright Music Group. Production Company – Wright Family Films.
Cast
Ashley Hays Wright (Herself), David Owen Wright (Husband), Jaina Wright (Jaina), Scout Wright (Scout), Cadence Wright (Cadence), Ronald Wright (Pastor)
Plot
In 2010, David Wright is required to return for a second term of duty in Iraq. Left on their own at their home in Amarillo, Texas, his wife Ashley and their three daughters become frightened as some supernatural entity haunts the house. Seeking refuge in their Christian beliefs, Ashley comes to realise that the demonic entity came from a book on witchcraft that was brought into the house among a box of used books and that it is inhabiting one of their daughters.
The Exorcism in Amarillo was the eighth film from Ashley Hays Wright who makes films with her family under the Wright Family banner. The Wrights have had a surprisingly prolific output of films with the likes of In Jesus Name (2019), The Badge, The Bible and Bigfoot (2019), Christmas Zombies (2020), Fighting Chupacabra and Cartel in Mexico (2020), Halloween Hero (2020), Monster Bee in D.C. (2020), The Rapture Diaries (2020), White Fangs (2020), Alien Whispers (2021), The Christmas Doodle (2021), Civil War Saint (2022), Fear Falls (2022), Bigfoot: Grip of the Monster (2023), Hearts & Horses (2023), The Hillock Haunting (2024), Parents for Christmas (2024), Bigfoot: Blood on the Farm (2025), Horse Healing (2025) and Monster Tapes (2025).
Exorcism films have become rife ever since the groundbreaking success of The Exorcist (1973). The 2000s brought a new wave of ‘based on a true story’ exorcism films beginning with the big hit of The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005). Others among this included The Rite (2011), The Conjuring (2013), Deliver Us From Evil (2014), The Crucifixion (2017), The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (2021), The Pope’s Exorcist (2023), The Deliverance (2024) and The Ritual (2025), among others. (For a more detailed overview see Possession Films).
With The Exorcism in Amarillo, it feels like the Wright Family are straining in a major way to jump on board the true-life exorcism fad. The film is based on a series of events that they claim happened to them in 2010. But when you are talking about a malevolent spirit entering the house through a second-hand book on witchcraft where its malicious actions consist of it knocking a loaf of bread off the kitchen bench and turning the power off, we are not exactly in the same arena as works like Emily Rose or The Rite, or even high believability stakes for that matter. It is not helped by the amateurish performances. Ashley Hays Wright’s direction is hesitant – she clearly has little grounding in the horror genre and skill at staging the haunting and possession effects with anything that makes an audience feel any of the characters’ fears.
I don’t doubt that Ashley Hays Wright and the Wright Family truly believe that what happened was true. I do however differ over their interpretation and opt for a more sceptical view of events. I don’t believe second-hand books on witchcraft are capable of carrying demonic spirits – in fact, I don’t believe in demons or possession period. Nor do I hold the Wright Family’s ardent Christian worldview to be true and accept their certain belief that they are a decent god-loving American family under siege from occult forces. If you at all differ from them in accepting the veracity of a white American evangelical dominionist view on Christianity, then you logically have to accept that a more mundane explanation for the events that they claim happen.
I won’t be so unkind as to accuse Ashley Hays Wright of being deluded or hallucinating what happened. I am sure that she is certain what happened was real; I am not. When you look at some of the hysterias that have run rife through evangelical Christianity – from fears of backwards masking in rock music to the wave of recovered childhood memories about satanic abuse that ran rife in the 1980s to modern anti-vaxx beliefs, then I would accuse churches of engendering a sense of hysteria that takes an unfounded idea – like the belief in the occult and possession – and inflaming it with a mindset that encourages people to interpret mundane or incidental things as evidence, even so far as to see things that are not there.
Even aside from that, The Exorcism in Amarillo shows that the Wrights hold an ugly, nationalistic American view of evangelical Christianity. The film opens with an hilarious country-and-western song with lyrics that include “I am a warrior/I am a Christian/Proud and true/I am an American/Red, white and blue” as David goes marching off to war in Iraq. Later David makes a return home and is seen wandering through the house by candlelight wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the legend ‘Faith/Family/Flag/Freedom.’ I find this kind of flag-waving self-righteous Christianity offensive, particularly to people who are non-American.
David wanders through the house in a long scene conducting the titular exorcism which comes with hilarious prayers and invocations. At one point, he even slips into drill-sergeant mode and commands the demon “You will stand at attention just like a soldier. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I command you to attention and you will not move.” Even more absurd are the end credits, which tells us that the only fiction in the film is having the husband return at the end: “The only addition was the husband coming home to show the importance of the head of the household.” We are finally warned of the dangers that beset the family “Spiritual warfare is real … Be careful. Be viligilent [sic]. Guard your family.”
Trailer here