“Exorcist II: The Heretic”
Day 2 of the 2023 31-Days of Horror.
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Picking up 4 years after the events of The Exorcist (1973), Regan (Linda Blair), who is 16 now, is undergoing psychotherapy to help her deal with the bad dreams from the memories she has repressed of her possession. With her actress mother on set making a movie, her nanny, Sharon (Kitty Winn), and her psychiatrist, Dr. Tuskin (Louise Fletcher), are her primary guardians. Meanwhile, Father Lamot (Richard Burton) is assigned to look into Father Merrin’s death, which occurred during Regan’s exorcism.
Be warned, ye who choose to read this, I must have been synchronized with the writer of this film when I wrote this review, because my writing makes almost as little sense as the film does.
Apparently, this film is widely regarded as a terrible sequel. Possibly because there’s simply so much going on and it feels like they just kept tossing in more random subplots rather than doing any of them well. Probably because audiences were thirsty to be horrified further after the first one. Unfortunately, director John Boorman, wanted to make a film which offered hope after the soul draining darkness of the original. So, instead of more gruesome, religious (Catholic) guilt and horror, we get a “new device” that can induce synchronized hypnosis. I googled it and it’s a real thing, just not like the ridiculous memory sharing that is demonstrated in the film.
Anyway, the story begins in a similar formula as the first one, by introducing the movie’s Exorcist. This time, however, with Fr. Lamot failing at an exorcism and the possessed person burning, causing him to question his faith. Then going to Regan, in this preposterous psych hospital/clinic/whatever, where all the walls are glass, without so much as blinds/shades for privacy and you can see that all the patients are from affluent families. Both Fr. Lamot and Regan are shown, at different times, watching the patients as if they’re some sort of curiosities… or animals in a zoo. Very telling of how mental illness was (truthfully still is) viewed. But I digress. The whole concept of this memory sharing device is awful and unfortunately sets the stage for the rest of the film. So Fr. Lamot, the day after meeting Regan, is suddenly her good friend and trusted to delve into, not her hypnotized mind, but Dr. Tuskin’s, because Dr. Tuskin had been synchronized with Regan and was now stuck in Regan’s memory. But Regan came out of the hypnosis, and Dr. Tuskin was suddenly in a.fib. because demon-Regan was trying to crush her heart in the memory, so Fr. Lamot hooked up to the machine and found the memory of Regan’s possession, then he gets sort of possessed. And then later in the film, out of seemingly no where, the nanny is possessed, even though she hadn’t used the machine. Sigh. If they had just tossed that garbage and went with any of the other subplots they’d added, it would probably have been a better movie.
There’s this whole subplot where Regan has some special ability which allowed her to help a non-verbal child with autism to speak. I’m guessing it’s supposed to be related to how/why she managed to overcome her possession. I wish they’d expanded on this more than the hypnosis thing. Still, it’s frustrating because it kind of retcons the fact that Fr. Damian Karras took the demon into himself then threw himself out the window to save Regan in the first movie. Now that I think of it, they really just kind of overlook all of Fr. Karras’ involvement in the first movie and focus only on Fr. Merrin.
Let’s just touch on, but I don’t want to go into too much, the blatant over-sexualization of what is supposed to be a 16-year-old child. I appreciate the fact that much of her clothing is intentionally white, therefore virginal, but no, she was clearly costumed to appeal to the creepier members of the male audience. Especially the end, where the only difference between the sultry demon possessed version of Regan and demure Regan was one had her hair up and one had her hair down. Worse, Linda Blair was barely 18 at the time this movie was released and according to her bio was going through some pretty intense real-life stuff during filming.
Regardless of all this, I actually really enjoyed watching it, except that one scene. I’m not typically a huge religious horror fan, but I liked the idea that the people who survive possession have some sort of god-granted grace to help or even save others, not just from demonic forces, but more mundane ailments. I like that they chose a young Ethiopian man, in the form of James Earl Jones to represent that goodness. I like that, instead of being a “white savior”, Fr. Lamot is accused of trafficking with demons by the devout African tribe. I liked that they chose to use the locusts as a metaphor. It’s a classic biblical reference, but the way they described “the brushing of the wings” is very much mob mentality. The wings pass on the demon’s whispers, while the mob energy feeds on fear and/or hate, until someone is strong enough to calm them. Yeah, like I mentioned earlier, a lot of stuff added, but not sufficiently explained or explored.
I’m giving it 2 3/4 glasses of dark red wine. I’ve seen worse.
3/4
