Year: 1978
Director: John Boorman
Country: US
Language: English
Director John Boorman has directed a number of classics of cinema, but lying like a stain on the rug is the box-office disaster and audience-loathed sequel, Exorcist II: The Heretic. This sequel to the original The Exorcist was inevitable. The 1973 film was the highest grossing motion picture in history at the time of release and Warner Bros. wasn't going to turn down a "guaranteed" money-maker.
In this film, a teenage girl once possessed by a demon finds that it still lurks within her. Meanwhile, a priest investigates the death of the girl's exorcist.
Part of the problem is that this picture did not have the original director William Friedkin attached to it. Reportedly, Warner Bros. gave him and author William Peter Blatty half a million dollars just to think of a concept for the sequel, but unfortunately they could not. After ditching the idea of making an ultra-cheap sequel that recycled unused footage and angles from the first movie with a framing device (this would have easily been worse than Exorcist II) The studio got a script they liked from William Goodhart and offered Boorman to direct. Boorman was coming off a financial flop in Zardoz, yet thought his film-making was good enough to change the script to his liking.
Re-writes, re-shoots, delays and illness all made Exorcist II a production disaster that left audiences thinking "what did I just watch?" Many of the film's plot points were utterly baffling, too absurd to be taken seriously and often very confusing. The editing is horrid and the cinematography is worse. Boorman seems to have an allergy to establishing shots and a love of locusts. Good god, the shots of locusts.
As a whole, Exorcist II isn't a scary movie nor does it feel like it exists in the same universe as the original film. Exorcist III is a far better picture in the series, definitely deserving of its cult following. If you can, avoid The Heretic.
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