Movie Review: Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977)

Like John Boorman’s Zardoz, this movie is incredibly ambitious and ultimately incomprehensible.

Boorman reportedly didn’t like the first Exorcist movie and sought out to make a completely different film. Hell, the movie doesn’t even really involve demonic possession until the end, and it feels like a studio insistence.

Instead, we get Father Philip Lamont (Richard Burton) following up on the death of Father Merrin in the first movie, and his investigation takes him to Africa, for some reason.

Regan (Linda Blair) returns, too, spending a lot of time at a hospital, with little memories of her time being possessed.

The movie is definitely hard to follow, and downright bizarre. It’s definitely surreal, and some of the images are just downright ridiculous.

The exorcism stuff at the end, as strange and tacked on as it is, is at least entertaining. It’s probably the best sequence of the movie, but it’s of course nowhere as good as the original.

Rating: 1/10