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EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC
1977
Director
John Boorman
Starring
Linda Blair
Richard Burton
Louise Fletcher
Runtime
117 minutes
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The mistake people make with EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC is assuming it wants to be a sequel to THE EXORCIST. What it actually wants to be is a multimillion-dollar planetarium show about sainthood.
Few sequels have wandered so boldly away from their source. Released four years after William Friedkin’s landmark horror film, this quintessential John Boorman freakout abandons claustrophobic terror in favor of mysticism, science fiction, dream logic, and theological speculation. When Father Lamont (Richard Burton) is tasked with investigating the death of Father Merrin, his search leads him back to Regan MacNeil (Linda Blair), whose past encounter with demonic possession appears connected to a mysterious force stretching across continents and centuries.
Locust swarms, psychic synchronizers, African visions, doppelgängers, and cosmic battles between good and evil collide in a film that seems determined to reinvent itself from scene to scene. Dismissed on release but increasingly admired for its audacity, EXORCIST II remains one of the strangest productions ever mounted by a major Hollywood studio. Ambitious, baffling, beautiful, ridiculous, and frequently all four at once, it occupies a category reserved for films that pivot so spectacularly into insanity they create entirely new forms of success.
THE MORRICONE CONTRIBUTION:
A gloriously unhinged mixture of angelic choirs, tribal percussion, buzzing electronics, and ecstatic orchestral surges. It sounds like an intercepted sacred ritual broadcast from another planet.
Few sequels have wandered so boldly away from their source. Released four years after William Friedkin’s landmark horror film, this quintessential John Boorman freakout abandons claustrophobic terror in favor of mysticism, science fiction, dream logic, and theological speculation. When Father Lamont (Richard Burton) is tasked with investigating the death of Father Merrin, his search leads him back to Regan MacNeil (Linda Blair), whose past encounter with demonic possession appears connected to a mysterious force stretching across continents and centuries.
Locust swarms, psychic synchronizers, African visions, doppelgängers, and cosmic battles between good and evil collide in a film that seems determined to reinvent itself from scene to scene. Dismissed on release but increasingly admired for its audacity, EXORCIST II remains one of the strangest productions ever mounted by a major Hollywood studio. Ambitious, baffling, beautiful, ridiculous, and frequently all four at once, it occupies a category reserved for films that pivot so spectacularly into insanity they create entirely new forms of success.
THE MORRICONE CONTRIBUTION:
A gloriously unhinged mixture of angelic choirs, tribal percussion, buzzing electronics, and ecstatic orchestral surges. It sounds like an intercepted sacred ritual broadcast from another planet.