Like nothing, because it wouldn't exist... I suppose that's the only right answer to that question. Some movies are just so great that they should simply be left alone. They are often the proverbial lightning in a bottle, they can't possibly be replicated. And indeed, they are so good that we can return to them time and time again, years or even decades later. In a word, they simply hold up. However, cinema, and perhaps all art, will always be a perpetual struggle between the art itself, born from the mind of the singular artist, and the vessel, which will always be subjected to human affairs. Or in the words of D'Angelo Barksdale, money be green. For that reason, studios often want to tap into the name recognition that certain movies have, names that will generate hype on their own due to the curiosity we have in knowing what happens next within a story we're already familiar with. And that curiosity really is infectious, it's pretty hard for me to resist such sequels even when I'm ninety-nine percent convinced they will suck. We just can't help wanting to learn more about it, which is why those videos and articles revealing book-only backstories are so darn popular. People get quite curious about finding out more about some mythical Game of Thrones characters or exotic places left out of the show, they wanna know Pennywise's nature and origin, they wanna know just who in the goddamn was that woman in the bathtub in The Shining, and they wanna know what was that green statue Father Merrin confronted... I suppose our brains always want to plug such holes, because having them is truly annoying and confusing, it just irks us and leaves us befuddled... But guess what? That's horror, although horror isn't always what it seems.
The more in-depth a story goes, the more real it becomes. It can be filled to the brim with supernatural stuff on every page or frame, it doesn't really matter because as soon as you create a rule, it becomes real, and thus, it becomes boring. And that, coupled with the fact that sequels are often made by trying to cram a bunch of nods to the original, thereby forcing the story to be worked around it, is why I think a sequel to The Exorcist should never have been made. I watched the sequel twice, having rewatched it recently, and while I'm intrigued by the folks who call it a masterpiece, I can't say I agree with them. I find the movie to be complete madness and at times quite surreal, which might have been interesting, but at the end of the day it's just plain boring.
Still, there are some things I like about it. It was a smart idea to have Father Lamont investigate the deaths of Merrin and Karras, and that is because it tees off the sequel pretty well, but also because it weaves the hard reality of this world with the faith in the next, the detective and the priest, the mundane and the spiritual. Because as the first film was shot much like a documentary, the book was written almost like a news article. This constant depiction of the supernatural within a very real setting is the story's bread and butter, and with Father Lamont being both a priest and a detective, we could have had a real story on our hands.
But alas, the movie doesn't do that, and I think the reason for that is the same reason why I can't offer a very detailed alternative, I can only give some loose ideas because I would change the whole thing drastically – I would have completely removed Regan from the film. The point of the demon possessing Regan was, as eloquently explained by Father Merrin, to prove that horrible things could happen to innocent people, to make believers lose all faith in God's love as he had apparently allowed such a wicked thing to happen. And so, Regan wasn't special at all, she was just some girl the demon happened to choose. Yet now, all of the sudden, Regan is the key to all of this... Thing is though, even still, she ain't all that interesting... She's taking some tap dance classes, for some reason, and she appears to be a sort of padawan to Louise Fletcher's character, who was apparently cast to play Chris MacNeil because Ellen Burstyn had the sense to refuse this film. Then at some point, the role of Doctor Tuskin went to Fletcher, and Kitty Winn's Sharon was written in to have a similar role to Chris'... Anyway, all of this mess has to be scrapped. Father Lamont could begin his investigation by ascertaining the whereabouts of the MacNeil family so that we would know by dialogue alone, or perhaps even through a letter, that everyone is doing just fine. Then he could visit the house only to find it inhabited by a new family, all of them happy as well. This would get to show off the house itself, as well as those famous steps, which the studio would love as it would forge ties with the previous film and yet telling the viewer not to expect the same thing as before by subconsciously giving them a false sense of security, and lastly it would be a reasonable place for Father Lamont to begin his investigation.
From here on out, it's all murky waters. I actually like the idea that a man as devout as Father Merrin has been accused of being a satanist. It's shocking but it actually makes sense because people are fickle in their love and dogmatic in their skepticism, so there's no reason to think priests would be any different. Some of them would want Merrin and Karras to become saints, while others, from the comfort of their own chambers, would believe them to be satanists who seek to subvert the church itself. On that note, we could perhaps have a scene similar to the meeting of the five families in The Godfather. We could have a council of priests debating the whole exorcism, some in favor of Merrin and Karras having been truly faithful until the end, and others vehemently opposed, once again in continuation with the first film, but also trapping Father Lamont somewhere in between. Because while I sorta dislike sequel titles in general, I do like the idea of heresies being a central theme here. Father Karras was almost faithless in the first film but found his faith in the end. Father Lamont will then have to do the same during the course of this film, maybe even after actually stumbling into satanism.
On that note, the trip to Africa could probably remain. Those scenes are quite surreal with all the dream-like sunsets, the ritualistic chanting, and the demonic locust swarms tearing through the village. The climb to the temple is fairly impressive too, indeed, the whole sequence is akin to a great fever dream. But the weird psychiatrist's office full of mirrors, the blinking lights of the mind-gizmo thing, and the dumb plot point of returning to an empty house with a barely demonic Regan on the bed... That's all lame. They wanted the ending to be a demonic confrontation in that very room and with Regan. But Linda Blair didn't want to sit on the makeup chair again, so they ended up using a stunt double for some of the shots, such as that weird heart massage one... And then I guess the demon wanted to seduce Father Lamont or something? I dunno, but the whole thing seems to be where the bad sequel game started. It seems like most of them, if not most modern horror movies in general, have followed this trend of a big, epic confrontation with crazy magic and haunted houses being swallowed whole. It's no longer a scaled back, intimate story, which was why the original was so good to begin with.
Come to think of it, the first film does a very smart thing in that, though it openly shows the green statue of Pazuzu, it doesn't ever mention his name, it just leaves it ambiguous as to just who is possessing Regan. The book does mention the name, and hints at some more of it later on, but the identity of the demon is more or less considered secondary. Well, for the sequel, they decided that Pazuzu was a funnier character than they ever had in any of the movies before, if they got Pazuzu working... But at least for me it just doesn't work. It's good clickbait for those “The Real Story of Pazuzu REVEALED!” videos but it completely deflates the tension of the film. Now we're not talking about mental illness or possession, we're not talking about faith and spirituality, we're not talking about unseen forces of evil, we're not even talking about the sheer brutality of this world where bad things happen to innocent people. No, now we're talking about some green, weird locust-man.
So while I'm not too sure of what I would have done differently, I know I would have gone with a more intimate story. The movie ought to follow Father Lamont's travels as he tries to clear the names of Merrin and Karras, all the while faltering in his faith, perhaps being seduced, not by some weird Regan, but by dark forces he can't quite comprehend. If a final exorcism just had to be done, it should have happened in Africa so that Father Lamont would have taken his first step in following Father Merrin's path, having thus recovered his faith after his initial failed exorcism, and having discovered the truth of Merrin's death, whether or not his mission of clearing his name was at all successful. I would say he shouldn't be successful, I'd say that Regan's exorcism ought to remain shrouded in mystery, becoming increasingly lost to rumor and skepticism. It just makes sense within christianity to have the most honorable men also being the most reviled, something which Father Merrin would respond to with kindness, and Father Karras, with a sort of playful sarcasm.
I wish I had a better outline to give but I can't even come close to a rough draft of a sequel to The Exorcist. It just doesn't make much sense to me. It's that old paradox – if you make the movie too similar, there's no point in it even existing, but if you make it too different, it's not really a sequel. In fact, if the movie is too different, calling it a sequel will most likely hinder it, like how in the third film Kinderman talks about Father Karras as his best friend though they barely knew each other, or how they needed to create an unnecessarily convoluted way to bring him back... Because a story is already difficult enough to write without constraints, so when you look at a blank page while having all those weird constraints in mind, you end up writing awkward ways to fit stuff in. And it's even worse if you have to rework those elements well after the fact. You can tell that someone in the studio said this second film had to end in that same house and with a possessed Regan on that same bed, no matter what happened up to that point. And of course, the aforementioned character switches and rewrites make the whole thing a mess, not to mention the story not having been written by William Peter Blatty.
So in essence, Heretic went too far in a few places. My goal would then be to diminish the effects of it, but perhaps the best option would be to never have made it in the first place... Just make a similar movie, write in a bunch of nods to the original as a way to show it is inspired by it, to show that fans of the original may like that new one as well, but don't make a sequel-sequel, don't give a story more material than it really needs. Because often times a story is made good, not by what it shows, but by what it leaves out. Some material hitting the cutting room floor is a good thing, and sadly, for many fans that's where this whole film should have stayed.
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