After being disappointed by The Exorcist: Believer I went back and watched the older movies and I have to say that out of them all, Exorcist II: The Heretic is by far the worst movie in this franchise. I would go as far as to say that this movie is straight up garbage. It is like they had about five ideas for a sequel to The Exorcist and rather than just double down and make a movie out of one of them, they threw them all into one movie.
How to Download Exorcist II: The Heretic
Exorcist II: The Heretic was released on June 17, 1977. You can download or stream the film from a digital platform. Click on the Download button at the end of this review and make your choice.
The Movie Review
We have a new main priest this time around. We have a man called Father Lamont who is tasked by the church to investigate the death of Father Merrin from the first movie which happened four years earlier. Why have they waited four years to investigate this, I wish I could tell you, but it is never explained.
Here we see Regan, once again played by Linda Blair. Regan is in a psych ward under the care of a Dr and Father Lamont wants to use some kind of weird mind melding technology to get her repressed memories back. I am not joking, that is pretty much the gist of what is going down here. Regan remembers nothing of her possession by the demon Pazuzu, but Father Lamont needs her to remember…. for some reason.
A Disjointed Plot and Unfocused Ideas
This movie is just a mess and I do not know where to start. We find out that Pazuzu attacks people with psychic abilities as they are a threat to him and that some kid in Africa was raised to fight him. We also learn that Regan now has some kind of psychic ability as well. There is a weird succubus that is a sexualized version of Regan. There is just way too much going on, very little of it makes sense and the whole movie is just hard to follow.
Missed Opportunities
The thing I will say in defense of Exorcist II: The Heretic is that I do feel that they had some pretty interesting ideas. If they had just focused on one of their ideas it could have been a much better movie. The way it stands, watching this is really hard to do as it is the kind of movie that feels like a massive chore to sit through.
A Disappointing Rewatch
I remember thinking that this movie was ok, but I had not seen it in many years. I read a bit about the franchise before The Exorcist: Believer came out and was shocked that so many people hated Exorcist II: The Heretic as I remembered it being pretty good! Well, just goes to show that we cannot always trust our memories as I was legit shocked at just how bad this movie was.
Trying to find at least one positive in a movie is something that I always try to do, but in the case of Exorcist II: The Heretic I really cannot think of anything that I liked here. I am more shocked that I remembered kind of liking this movie, to be honest with you! Exorcist II: The Heretic is possibly the worst sequel that I have ever seen, it is that bad! It is the kind of movie that is so bad, that you kind of have to watch it to appreciate just how bad it is.
