The Exorcist II: The Heretic Review with Sydney Lee

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Who possessed these filmmakers to make one of the worst sequels of all time? The Exorcist 2 is a befuddling mess that bears no resemblance to the original.

Synopsis

In this sequel to the Exorcist, Father Lamont, played by Richard Burton, is assigned to investigate the last exorcism of Father Merrin to clear his name of any doubt of faith. Father Lamont finds Regan spending her time in therapy in a psychiatric institute that appears to be the backrooms of Westworld. Her doctor, Gene Tuskin, played by Louise Fletcher is testing out a new device that synchronizes hypnotic states… or something. In the course of her experiments and Father Lamont’s investigation, we find out that Regan isn’t Exorcized, but just mostly exorcized.

In the end, we get more pazuzu than we bargained for…

Review of The Exorcist II: The Heretic

The Exorcist still stands as one of the best movies of all time, and still is my favorite horror movie. So I have always been intrigued by The Exorcist 2, and the fact that it’s so bad, that almost no one ever talks about it. Exorcist 2 is widely regarded as one of the worst movies ever made, and probably the worst sequel ever made.

How does this happen?

If you look at the cast, there are some real heavy hitters.

The film’s cast includes one Oscar winner (Louise Fletcher) and five Oscar nominees (Linda Blair, Max von Sydow, Richard Burton, Ned Beatty, and James Earl Jones).

It’s directed by Sir John Boorman, the director of Deliverance.

In short, a bunch of people that should have known better than to absolutely abandon everything that made the original good.

Instead of grounding the story in reality and the characters’ humanity to further analyze the nature of good, evil, and faith; we are treated to some kind of scifi supernatural fever dream. The film feels like it was written on the fly, and that’s not far from the truth. After it’s disastrous opening, it was pulled twice from theaters to be recut, and even after all that, this film is utterly befuddling.

There are some scenes, especially involving the hypnotism device, that are so hilariously inept that it feels like they were written as jokes.

If you dig deep enough, you can find some interesting ideas about good attracting evil, and the dangers of getting too close to evil, but they are completely overwhelmed by the bizarre choices in the story.

It is a very bad movie, but the case can be made that it’s so bad that it’s good. This is definitely an oddity, and could be a good time with friends if you want something to riff on while watching.

Score

3/10