Richard Burton) Linda Blair) Louise Fletcher) The film opens with the slightly unsure priest, Father Lamont (, performing an exorcism on a young woman in a Latin American country. Shit goes south pretty quick when the young girl lights herself on fire and does her best impression of Judge Doom at the end of Who Framed Roger Rabbit (only without as much melting and 11 years earlier). We then jump to Regan MacNeil (, who seems to have forgotten the ordeal of her possession by the demon Pazuzu four years before. She spends her time visiting some kind of extremely high tech (for the 70s) psychiatric institute, where her status is monitored by a Dr. Gene Tuskin (. Tuskin, who seemingly helps youth to overcome various handicaps with technology, believes Regan is just repressing the memories of a psychosis induced traumatic event and wants to hook her up to some kind of magic biofeedback/mind melding machine, to which Regan declines initially. The film cuts back to Father Lamont, who has just been charged with investigating Father Merrin’s death (from the first movie), by the higher-ups at the Catholic church. You get the hint the church wants to kind of sweep the whole thing under the rug and doesn't really want the word getting out that sometimes they battle demons. He isn't keen on the idea having had botched an exorcism recently himself, but the cardinal gives him little choice, in a scene reminiscent of something you would see in a cop drama between a renegade detective and his Sargent. The padre reluctantly visits the institute were Regan is being studied and initially receives, mostly, pushback from Dr. Tuskin, who doesn't want to cause any further damage to Regan's mental state. Within a few minutes though, and after Regan pops her head in the room, they all decide the best course of action is for everyone take a ride on the biofeedback machine into Regan’s head. The next day they meet up and everyone takes turns wearing goofy probe- attached headgear and poking the evil that still resides inside Regan's mind. Of course, that shit doesn't go well at all, and old Pazuzu gets back into his shenanigans and fucks with everyone, only this time with the sensibilities of a Sting solo album, complete with faux-African chants, healers, and other new age bullshit.

While the story connects to the original with little issue, its tone is completely changed. Even at its most bleak, the movie feels more like a follow up to The Omen (1976) than the original Exorcist but with strangely uplifted spirits. The first half slips into a weird, almost sci-fi like setting that includes Star Trek style automatic doors and unbelievable leaps in hypnosis technology. It exhausts little attention on the central priests struggle with his faith or “worthiness”--the only real tie to the original’s type of drive, and it never really flushes out enough details for that conflict to be felt over the swirling optimistic pseudoscience. Its attempts at surrealism fall in more closely to low-grade Italian trash cinema than anything Blatty ever wrote. The effect of these moments is mostly created by fade-ins and repetitive chanting, as if a 90s soccer mom was having an acid flashback while hopped up on holistic medicine. As it leans into the religion angles, harder towards the middle, it also brings with it an almost adventurous note, with the priest globetrotting for clues and Regan's infliction becoming more superpower like. The magic elements leave the Catholic religion subject altogether and venture into new age mysticism. Instead of the puke covered physical and mental war between good and evil of the first, it opts for what mostly boils down to hokey “dream” battles, like some kind of ignored/lost precursor to Nightmare on Elm Street 3 ’s gimmick.

It's pretty fucking uneven, but, in a way, the clashing makes it feel a little ahead of its time. The mixed-bag, horror stylings feel a lot like the various genre sequels that would come out later on and into the middle of the 80s. It's very much the quintessential cash grab follow-up. It has the distinct flavor of a rushed slightly original script that has been stepped on and rewritten several times. Ideas are all over the place and mostly severed. Supernatural forces run rampant in this alternative universe, and all religions are truly one. It tries to fit in so much mysticism, laced with soft lighting that it ends up completely erasing the terrible bleak world the first Exorcist built and replaces it with one of powerful magic. An alternative overly religious place where the holy and divine always seems to outgun the eternally malicious. The mess plops out at the other end as an overall surprisingly fun film. This is also probably one of the reasons it gets so much hate. The dream powers and happy ending feel incongruous when placed between the more morbid, angry bulk of the series. It is a complete failure of a continuation, but without that cross to bear, the well worked over, confused schlock makes for a good but goofy ass watch.