39
Metascore
11 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 60Chicago ReaderDave KehrChicago ReaderDave KehrBoorman deserves credit for trying out some new ideas, even if most of them backfire. Visually, it's fascinating—sort of a blend of Minnellian baroque and Buñuelian absurdity—but the dialogue is childish, the story is incomprehensible, and the metaphysics are ridiculous. Still, an audacious failure is preferable to a chickenhearted success. More than worth a look, if only out of curiosity.
- 50Time OutTime OutSubstantially recut by Boorman after his original version was derided in America, but it's still easy to see why New Yorkers jeered. Boorman completely avoids gore and obscenity, treating the original as a kind of sacred good-versus-evil text, and weaving its sets and characters into a highly traditional confrontation of occult forces.
- 50TV Guide MagazineTV Guide MagazineNot as awful as its notorious reputation would indicate, but certainly not the neglected masterpiece its small cult of supporters has claimed, Boorman's gorgeously shot sequel to The Exorcist has isolated moments of breathtaking imagery, but its parts do not add up to a satisfying whole.
- 50The New YorkerPauline KaelThe New YorkerPauline KaelThe film is too cadenced and exotic and too deliriously complicated to succeed with most audiences (and when it opened, there were accounts of people in theaters who threw things at the screen). But it's winged camp--a horror fairy tale gone wild, another in the long history of moviemakers' king-size follies. There's enough visual magic in it for a dozen good movies; what it lacks is judgement.
- 42The A.V. ClubNathan RabinThe A.V. ClubNathan RabinIt would be a lot easier to buy Exorcist II: The Heretic as a mood piece if it was able to sustain a tone beyond clumsy exposition and hysterical camp for longer than a few minutes.
- 40EmpireKim NewmanEmpireKim NewmanA famously disastrous follow-up to William Friedkin’s horror hit.
- A snooze-fest without any scares.
- 40NewsweekJack KrollNewsweekJack KrollThis sequel is so laden with dubious, spurious, curious and tedious stuff about theology, parapsychology, entomology and speleology that it forgets to frighten you in its frantic concern with being hip in the fad world of the occult. The Heretic simply drowns in its own malarky. [27 June 1977, p.61]
- 30The New York TimesVincent CanbyThe New York TimesVincent CanbyExorcist II begins by looking foolish and slowly becomes a straightfaced film of the absurd.