Hot Take: The Second Exorcist Movie is Actually Good

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Film | October 6, 2023 |

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Film | October 6, 2023 |

This week sees the release of The Exorcist: Believer, the latest addition to the long-running franchise that began with one of the greatest horror films ever made. Reviews were slow to appear, and they haven’t been especially positive, which doesn’t bode well for director David Gordon Green’s planned reboot trilogy, with the studio putting down $400 million for the rights to the property.

This new movie, which sees Ellen Burstyn return to the narrative for the first time since the original film, is intended to be a direct sequel to William Friedkin’s iconic tale of demonic possession. The idea is that all of the other sequels and prequels basically don’t exist anymore, which is a common creative decision for many a horror sequel-slash-reboot (hello, the new Halloween trilogy, also by David Gordon Green.) That’s a shame for a number of reasons. Most of those movies are, at the very least, rather interesting. The Exorcist III is a brilliant psychological thriller with one of the best jump scares committed to celluloid. Paul Schrader’s prequel Dominion was taken off him by producers, but his director’s cut is risky and fascinated by the origins of evil. Even the Fox TV series had its moment.

Alas, you won’t see many people mourning the canonical erasure of Exorcist II: The Heretic. According to some people, not only is it one of the worst sequels ever made, it’s a contender for the worst movie of all time. Mark Kermode, famously a die-hard fan of Friedkin’s film, declared it to be ‘demonstrably the worst film ever made […] on one level farcically stupid and on another level absolutely unforgivable.’ Friedkin, never shy with his opinions, called it ‘a freaking disgrace […] made by a demented mind.’ Here’s my hot take: they’re wrong and Exorcist II: The Heretic is actually a fascinating film worthy of re-examination.

John Boorman, best known for Deliverance, was offered the opportunity to direct the first film but turned it down because he considered it to be ‘a film about torturing a child.’ When he read a three-page treatment for a sequel written by William Goodhart, he was taken in by the idea of exploring a true battle of goodness versus seemingly unfathomable evil. Said Boorman. ‘I saw it then as a chance to film a riposte to the first picture.’ It’s seldom advisable to hire someone to direct a sequel to a movie they actively hate, but this was the man who made Zardoz, so they weren’t aiming for common sense. Hey, it was the ’70s. Hollywood was fuelled by something different. Sniff.

Linda Blair returned for Exorcist II: The Heretic, once again playing Regan MacNeil, now a teenager who doesn’t remember her traumatic experiences with possession. Now living with her guardian Sharon in New York City, she continues to be monitored at a psychiatric institute by Dr. Gene Tuskin (the always-welcome Louise Fletcher.) Tuskin believes that her memories are repressed and encourages her to undergo a new form of biohacking hypnotism to retrieve them. Meanwhile, Father Lamont (Richard Burton, definitely not sober), a priest struggling with his faith after an exorcism gone wrong, is assigned by the Cardinal to investigate the death of Father Merrin from the first movie. Pazuzu is waiting to return and claim ownership over Regan and lead the way for a new kind of demonic rule.

The one major criticism that fans and skeptics alike have of The Heretic is that it isn’t very scary. Indeed, I would struggle to even categorize it as a horror film. It doesn’t fit neatly into any genre, in fairness. It’s a thriller but it has horror elements but it’s also a morality tale but it’s a psychological drama but then it’s weirdly sensual. Visually, it’s a total contrast from the steely coldness of Friedkin’s upper-class D.C., forever shrouded in fog and shadows. Boorman aims for giallo-esque psychedelia with a blend of feverish intensity, particularly in the scenes in Africa which feel like a cross between a pulp horror nightmare and a prog-rock album cover (so many locusts.) The scene where Lamont’s exorcism of a possessed girl ends in flames is genuinely devastating to watch, with Boorman fully capturing the sense of an escapable hell. In another scene, a man falls from a cliff in eerie slow-motion that captures the loss of time of being in a dream. It’s also aurally oppositional to Friedkin’s film. Why have Tubular Bells when you could have Ennio Morricone doing one of his most out-there scores, a liturgical force that includes androgynous vocals that send shudders down your spin.

The Exorcist isn’t really about Regan. It’s about her mother and the priests, with the little girl being the epicentre of a seismic force that traumatizes all surrounding her. Choosing to centre the story on the now-adolescent Regan, who, unbeknownst to herself, has fought the ultimate evil and survived. If she’s a mere victim of circumstance in the first film, here she is a beacon of goodness. Is it possible to stay good after such an experience? Can you maintain it when evil continues to target you? To fight modern evil, humans must evolve, and Regan finds herself able to telepathically reach out to those in need. Father Lamont’s investigation uncovers another boy who was possessed by Pazuzu, the demon who took over Regan, and sees a similar advancement (the adult version of this boy is played by James Earl Jones!) This Regan is a modern day saint on the verge of martyrdom yet constantly fighting that seeming inevitability, while those around her, like Father Lamont, are dragged down by their basest human struggles, including lust. Evil is universal, not just the domain of guilty Catholics.

Okay, here’s the thing: Some of Exorcist II: The Heretic is, indeed, very silly. Burton is clearly inebriated, some of the dialogue is matter-of-fact to the point of absurdity (such as when Regan casually explains that she was once possessed by a demon but it’s okay because he’s gone now), and it’s all extremely over-the-top. It’s overheated, deliberately so, but that means it can’t help but occasionally slide into accidental parody. I know a lot of people who can’t help but laugh every time they watch the film and hear someone say the names Pazuzu or Kokumo. Friedkin’s film rooted itself so thoroughly in the real world, which made Regan’s agonies so unbearable. The Heretic inhabits the hazy space of psychological torment by comparison. Really, it’s hard to think of this as a direct sequel to the original, which is what throws so many people off. We know that protagonist and what she’s been through, so seeing her journey through startlingly different lenses takes some getting used to. Plenty of people just didn’t. Sometimes, one man’s nightmare is another’s weird joke.

While its opening weekend box office numbers were strong, terrible reviews and poor word-of-mouth hampered its overall performance. It still turned a profit but it couldn’t help but feel like a failure in comparison to the cultural phenomenon of the original. Boorman admitted that they recut the film more than once while it was still playing in theatres, and that its disappointing reception meant he couldn’t talk about it for years afterward. But he had some allies. Pauline Kael liked it better than Friedkin’s film. Martin freaking Scorsese loves it, comparing Regan’s narrative to that of the Book of Job.

It’s not hard to make a bad film. We get hundreds of them a year, and most of them are boring. Truly terrible movies lack ambition to be anything better than dreck, and are quickly forgotten once they leave theatres. There’s a reason you don’t hear people talking about Stealth these days. I personally struggle to discard films that actually have a vision, as demented and out of sync with the rest of the world as it may be. Whatever you think about Exorcist II: The Heretic, you can’t deny that it is a visually splendorous fable that has a hoard of ideas at its centre. It’s tough to deny that swaths of the film are, to put it mildly, inconsistent. The final product may not equal the sum of its parts but those disparate parts are striking, daring, truly bananas, and driven by a filmmaker eager to make something truly unique, and not just in comparison to its predecessor. If our cinematic landscape is to be further saturated by IP rehashes and studios’ desperate desire to recapture past glories, perhaps it wouldn’t be the worst thing to try and fail spectacularly for once.