Movies
Exorcist II: The Heretic
John Boorman's Manichean allegory of good and evil, spirit and flesh, religion and science, goes way over the head of the Exorcist original, and probably over the head of the average fright-show fan as well. It goes so far as to identify Regan MacNeil (again Linda Blair) as one of God's Chosen, no less, and her hell-sent adversary as Pazuzu, the evil spirit of the air (it provides, in other words, a raison d'être for the earlier work: why was the Devil picking on this particular girl?); and it replaces the cheap thrills of its forerunner with some heady poetic motifs -- locusts, doves (shades of Georges Franju), autistic children. The storyline, which shoots off big ideas and tantalizing innuendos like a Fourth of July sparkler, is just barely coherent; but it needs no defense except as a vehicle for the director's extravagant imagery -- fluid, fantastic, phantasmagoric. Richard Burton, Louise Fletcher, James Earl Jones. 1977.
— Duncan Shepherd
Reader Rating:
- MPAA Rating: R
