Editorials
In Defense of ‘The Exorcist II: The Heretic’
As the 40th anniversary of the release of The Exorcist II: The Heretic arrives, it is tempting to remember the film only as a misguided sequel to a superior film that barely doubled its $14 million budget; not so impressive, compared to the over $400 million made by the original. However, the film can be a worthwhile, interesting, and possibly very fun one to the right viewer due to a few elements worthy of recognition.
First, it’s amazing that the film even exists.
Being the creative team that followed up the groundbreaking, award-winning, highly profitable original was an unenviable task. The brave soul who would take on that task had so many likely bad outcomes: being less profitable, retreading familiar ground, or even retroactively robbing the original of some of its power. It’s not a coincidence that it took 23 years to get a sequel to Psycho, and Rosemary’s Baby has never had a filmic sequel. Films of that era weren’t automatically franchised, and it was John Boorman who accepted this impossible challenge.
Second, while the film isn’t a great sequel to The Exorcist, it is a GREAT continuation of the daring career of director John Boorman. In a single decade, from 1972 to 1981, Boorman directed the backwoods terror of Deliverance, the trippy sci-fi of Zardoz, the New Age spirituality of Exorcist II: The Heretic, and the decidedly offbeat King Arthur film Excalibur. His dazzling visual style, insistence on unconventional stories, and narratives about men in spiritual and existential crises makes the second Exorcist film a perfect fit for his filmography.
Third, this movie is BONKERS (in an entertaining way)! Building off the possession in the first film, Boorman and the film’s writers somehow found a way to incorporate a complicated metaphysical plot about human evolution. He tied the Regan possession into a previous possession Father Merrin encountered in Africa, showed audiences a biofeedback machine that could put people’s brainwaves in sync.
The wacky follow-up also includes plagues of locusts, a very uncomfortable seduction sequence with Linda Blair as a succubus doppelganger, and…
… James Earl Jones, a serious and well-respected actor, dressed like this and somehow still keeping a straight face.
Fourth, The Exorcist II beat Alien by two years in changing a lead male role and recasting it for an actress. Alien cast Sigourney Weaver in a role originally written for a man in 1979; but in 1977, Boorman took the male role of Dr. Gene Tuskin and filled it with Louise Fletcher, still highly sought-after due to her Academy Award-winning turn in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. As usual, horror and science fiction were well ahead of the curve on giving substantial lead roles to women.
And even if you hate The Exorcist II, you can probably appreciate that the excellent third film in the series, Exorcist III: Legion, only exists because novelist and screenwriter for the original film, William Peter Blatty saw Boorman’s film and thought it was laughable. Before the release of the second installment, he had no desire or concept for another entry in the series. However, he was unwilling to let the confusing and, in his eyes, unintentionally hilarious second film be the last thing movie-goers remembered about The Exorcist – so he created Legion as a book. He eventually directed the sequel film himself, which has brilliantly scary moments, the return of Jason Miller, and yet another great Brad Dourif performance.
It’s a better movie that wouldn’t exist without this one, for what it’s worth.
So in celebration of forty years of befuddlement and awkward laughs, let’s bring John Boorman’s gonzo work of art in from the cold and enjoy it for the few things it does right and the many things it does entertainingly, spectacularly wrong.
At the very least, you can’t accuse it of being conventional.
Having grown up in a religious family, Christian movie night was something that happened a lot more often than I care to admit. However, back when I was a teenager, my parents showed up one night with an unusually cool-looking DVD of a movie that had been recommended to them by a church leader. Curious to see what new kind of evangelical propaganda my parents had rented this time, I proceeded to watch the film with them expecting a heavy-handed snoozefest.
To my surprise, I was a few minutes in when Denzel Washington proceeded to dismember a band of cannibal raiders when I realized that this was in fact a real movie. My mom was horrified by the flick’s extreme violence and dark subject matter, but I instantly became a fan of the Hughes Brothers’ faith-based 2010 thriller, The Book of Eli. And with the film’s atomic apocalypse having apparently taken place in 2024, I think this is the perfect time to dive into why this grim parable might also be entertaining for horror fans.
Originally penned by gaming journalist and The Walking Dead: The Game co-writer Gary Whitta, the spec script for The Book of Eli was already making waves back in 2007 when it appeared on the coveted Blacklist. It wasn’t long before Columbia and Warner Bros. snatched up the rights to the project, hiring From Hell directors Albert and Allen Hughes while also garnering attention from industry heavyweights like Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman.
After a series of revisions by Anthony Peckham meant to make the story more consumer-friendly, the picture was finally released in January of 2010, with the finished film following Denzel as a mysterious wanderer making his way across a post-apocalyptic America while protecting a sacred book. Along the way, he encounters a run-down settlement controlled by Bill Carnegie (Gary Oldman), a man desperate to get his hands on Eli’s book so he can motivate his underlings to expand his empire. Unwilling to let this power fall into the wrong hands, Eli embarks on a dangerous journey that will test the limits of his faith.
SO WHY IS IT WORTH WATCHING?
Judging by the film’s box-office success, mainstream audiences appear to have enjoyed the Hughes’ bleak vision of a future where everything went wrong, but critics were left divided by the flick’s trope-heavy narrative and unapologetic religious elements. And while I’ll be the first to admit that The Book of Eli isn’t particularly subtle or original, I appreciate the film’s earnest execution of familiar ideas.
For starters, I’d like to address the religious elephant in the room, as I understand the hesitation that some folks (myself included) might have about watching something that sounds like Christian propaganda. Faith does indeed play a huge part in the narrative here, but I’d argue that the film is more about the power of stories than a specific religion. The entire point of Oldman’s character is that he needs a unifying narrative that he can take advantage of in order to manipulate others, while Eli ultimately chooses to deliver his gift to a community of scholars. In fact, the movie even makes a point of placing the Bible in between equally culturally important books like the Torah and Quran, which I think is pretty poignant for a flick inspired by exploitation cinema.
Sure, the film has its fair share of logical inconsistencies (ranging from the extent of Eli’s Daredevil superpowers to his impossibly small Braille Bible), but I think the film more than makes up for these nitpicks with a genuine passion for classic post-apocalyptic cinema. Several critics accused the film of being a knockoff of superior productions, but I’d argue that both Whitta and the Hughes knowingly crafted a loving pastiche of genre influences like Mad Max and A Boy and His Dog.
Lastly, it’s no surprise that the cast here absolutely kicks ass. Denzel plays the title role of a stoic badass perfectly (going so far as to train with Bruce Lee’s protégée in order to perform his own stunts) while Oldman effortlessly assumes a surprisingly subdued yet incredibly intimidating persona. Even Mila Kunis is remarkably charming here, though I wish the script had taken the time to develop these secondary characters a little further. And hey, did I mention that Tom Waits is in this?
AND WHAT MAKES IT HORROR ADJACENT?
Denzel’s very first interaction with another human being in this movie results in a gory fight scene culminating in a face-off against a masked brute wielding a chainsaw (which he presumably uses to butcher travelers before eating them), so I think it’s safe to say that this dog-eat-dog vision of America will likely appeal to horror fans.
From diseased cannibals to hyper-violent motorcycle gangs roaming the wasteland, there’s plenty of disturbing R-rated material here – which is even more impressive when you remember that this story revolves around the bible. And while there are a few too many references to sexual assault for my taste, even if it does make sense in-universe, the flick does a great job of immersing you in this post-nuclear nightmare.
The excessively depressing color palette and obvious green screen effects may take some viewers out of the experience, but the beat-up and lived-in sets and costume design do their best to bring this dead world to life – which might just be the scariest part of the experience.
Ultimately, I believe your enjoyment of The Book of Eli will largely depend on how willing you are to overlook some ham-fisted biblical references in order to enjoy some brutal post-apocalyptic shenanigans. And while I can’t really blame folks who’d rather not deal with that, I think it would be a shame to miss out on a genuinely engaging thrill-ride because of one minor detail.
With that in mind, I’m incredibly curious to see what Whitta and the Hughes Brothers have planned for the upcoming prequel series starring John Boyega…
There’s no understating the importance of a balanced media diet, and since bloody and disgusting entertainment isn’t exclusive to the horror genre, we’ve come up with Horror Adjacent – a recurring column where we recommend non-horror movies that horror fans might enjoy.
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