Dark Was The Night

Dark Was The Night (2015)

Dir. Jack Heller

Written by Tyler Hisel

Starring Kevin Durand, Lukas Haas, Bianca Kajlich

DARK WAS THE NIGHT opens well. I like the font of the title, and I like that little drawing of the scary hand thing. Good hustle, right out of the gate. Unfortunately that is literally the last moment in the entire runtime which features anything commendable on-screen. I kinda hate to really lay into a little indie production, which I’m sure was motivated by genuinely desire to make a good movie. But I gotta call ‘em like I see ‘em, and this is, simply, a movie with nothing, nothing whatsoever, to recommend it.

It’s not for lack of ambition. In fact, you would never guess it from the finished film, but the script, by Tyler Hisel (2013’s lions-eat-white-people found-footage debacle SAFARI) was apparently included on that prestigious Hollywood Blacklist of highly-respected but unproduced screenplays back in 2009. That makes it sound pretty impressive until you remember that the same year, DUE DATE, RED RIDING HOOD, THE WATCH, and THE VATICAN TAPES were also on that list. But fair’s fair, I can see why someone could read this script and imagine a good movie. It’s an ambitious horror script, especially for a monster movie, because it focuses its attention much more on the painful personal lives of its protagonists than it does on monster attacks. In fact the monster doesn’t even show up til the movie’s final minutes; most of the runtime, it’s all about that subtle, implied horror of something unknown, something you can’t see. To wit: the people of winter-bound Maiden Woods, NY* are seeing signs that something is amiss. Animals acting strangely, mysterious tracks appearing around town, claw marks on some old dude’s barn. Meanwhile, sheriff Paul Shields (Kevin Durand, LEGION, COSMOPOLIS) is trying to keep the citizens calm while dealing with his own grief and guilt over the loss of his son and subsequent separation from his wife (Bianca Kajlich, HALLOWEEN: RESURRECTION, but don’t hold that against her).

This could all be in service of a tense, unsettling tale of psychological pain with flourishes of horror, but an emphasis on icy, existential dread. Something in the vein of THE BABADOOK, or CURE. It could have been. But it isn’t. The script has that ambition, but its handling of this scenario is as rote as it’s possible to conceive of, and despite its emphasis on drama, the characters are all desperately one-note regurgitations of threadbare cliches. For fuck’s sake, every movie cop has a photo of a dead relative in his wallet that he sadly looks at while feeling guilty. Stretching a hacky genre staple into a feature-length movie is a dangerous enough proposition in itself, and Hisel does nothing whatsoever to expand on the basic premise or tease any meaning from it. It’s just the normal scene of an unshaven movie cop, sitting on his bed staring intensely into the middle distance feeling guilty and hoping for redemption... except instead of one scene it’s 50 minutes of 90 minute movie. Nothing interesting comes of it, he’s just kinda glum and mopey for a long time and eventually there’s a monster.

Who put Dave Matthews in a horror movie?

Even so, I think you could make a decent movie out of this premise with direction strong enough to overcome the thin script. Horror doesn’t require elaborate writing so much as a robust command of cinema, and I think the intention here is to be a bleak, stripped-down mood piece. With a masterful control of atmosphere, the gloomy characters might at least seem appropriate, if not independently interesting. That’s what’s being attempted, I think: Director Jack Heller (the little-seen thriller ENTER NOWHERE, executive producer of BAD MILO!) is aiming for the understated, icy dread of a DON’T LOOK NOW or HOUSE OF THE DEVIL, where the mundane is made ominous through a careful use of cinematography, editing, and music. An ambitious goal, to be sure, but unfortunately the movie just plain does not have the talent to back it up. Heller simply lacks the chops it takes to use the power of cinema to evoke the unease a movie like this needs to take flight. The filmmaking is as pedestrian as movies come, and occasionally outright amateurish. There’s very little actual horror in the script -- it’s totally reliant on the direction to create an eerie atmosphere in which to lay out its gloomy personal drama-- so when the direction stumbles, then, there’s nothing to fall back on. Nothing. It becomes a sad-sack, repetitive low-budget mumblecore misery porn which turns into a cheesy monster movie in the final 5 minutes.

It’s a shame, in a way, because of course you want a horror movie like this to succeed. I’m sure Heller was trying to do a good job here, trying to make something serious and mature, something that unsettled. But there’s a reason most horror films don’t try for that. If you make a tits-and-bloodsplatter gimmick slasher movie and fail to use the full power of cinema to provoke unease deep in the soul, that’s OK, you still got tits, bloodsplatter, and gimmicky slashing. If you make a quiet, intimate film about guilt and fail to use the full power of cinema to provoke unease deep in the soul, you got nothing. And almost immediately, the seams start to show.

See, the times when there were only one set of footprints, those times the monster was carrying you

I was willing to grant it a little leeway at first; Durand’s working pretty hard as the lead, even if he doesn’t have anything especially interesting to work with. Lukas Haas (MARS ATTACKS) has even less to do as his sidekick, another burned-out cop with a tragic backstory which is equally insipid and unimportant, but he’s trying hard too. The cinematography by Ryan Samul is ugly and drab --a shame since he’s been doing such great work with Jim Mickle recently, especially the handsomely lensed COLD IN JULY-- but that’s mostly explained by the debilitating flatness of the color-corrected images and the cheesey editing (one can’t help but wonder if the producers ruined some decent shots in post, as they did to poor Gabriel Kosuth on DYING OF THE LIGHT and god knows how many other movies over the last decade). Mostly it’s not actively bad, it’s just monotonous and derivative. You can deal with that for a while -- you know, low budget movie, can’t expect everything to be money shots. They spend a lot of time teasing that something cool will come along, you think, maybe they’re just building up to something awesome that will make the long wait totally worth it. But as minute after desolate minute ticks by, it becomes increasingly obvious that nothing is going to be able to save a movie this empty.

Eventually, the tipping point comes and you just can’t help but start to feel insulted by just how little effort is being made to keep you entertained. And gradually you start to see what you first took for an attempt at low-key mood building as simple laziness. Was this a legitimate failed effort to make a chilly, tense suspense piece, or just an excuse to grind out low-effort genre content for netflix so they can run up their numbers without paying for a real movie? I can’t answer that question, but if it looks like a sub-SyFy-Channel hack job, plays like a sub-SyFy-Channel hack job, and sucks like a sub-SyFy-Channel hack job…well, maybe it is exactly what it looks like. I can’t guess at the filmmakers’ intentions, but I can give you the standard checklist for crappy low-budget SyFy-channel wannabe bullshit: Ugly, desaturated monochromatic look. Check. B-list actors (at least one of them little-seen since the 90’s) spend the whole movie mumbling through one-note non-characters. Check. Monster is A) American Indian legend B) the result of man’s trespass on nature, or in this case C) both. Check. Check. Check. Monster is hidden in shadows and by shaky cam, but occasionally runs blurrily right in front of the camera’s field of vision accompanied by a loud musical sting. Check. Ridiculously low bodycount and no gore. Check. Monster finally appears in the last 5 minutes, looks like shit, and is brought to life by crappy CG. Check. More producers, executive producers, and co-producers than principal cast. Check. Cop with a tragic past? Climax in a church? That scene where something scary blocks the light underneath the bedroom door? Hunters in the woods get eaten by unseen force? Sudden realization once you get a good look at the thing that there’s no possible way it could have done all the spooky shit it was doing before we could see it? One check after another.

That last one is a personal pet peeve of mine, and I’d like to take a minute to address it here, if I may. Don’t you just hate it when the monster or killer or whatever is deliberately obscured and it’s doing all sorts of crazy shit, circling around hunters invisibly too fast for them to see, grabbing someone from inside a car, sticking its victims in the tops of tree… and then when you actually see it it’s a big lumbering lizard which can’t even manage to kill two dorks in an empty room? I mean, this thing would obviously not even fit in a car, much less have the strategic focus (or even desire) to pull off a maneuver like that. I officially call bullshit on this lazy practice. If you’re gonna show your monster doing impossible things when I can’t see it, you better be able to convince me it could feasibly do those things when the big reveal comes. If you have to make it totally change up it’s MO at the end because doing the same stuff would seem ludicrous once we can actually take a gander, congratulations, you’re the real monster here. (This one is especially egregious because they make a big deal about the mysterious tracks it leaves, which are of a distinct “three-cloven hoof.” Guess, what, when you actually see the foot, it’s not a fucking hoof, it’s just a regular dinosaur foot like you’d expect these big lizard dudes to have. Look, if you guys can’t be bothered to even remember the details of your own stupid monster movie, how can you expect us to take it seriously?)

Given all that, I was absolutely stunned when I saw a handful of good reviews of this thing, including from longtime friend of the site and film criticism’s second greatest troll Fred Topel (sorry Fred, as long as Armond White remains alive you’ll never quite reach the top of your game). All the positive reviews cited the film’s restraint and focus on drama as a selling point, but while I can understand applauding a film’s ambition in this regard, I defy anyone to try and claim the actual substance of the movie succeeds in generating either the tension or the drama it aspires to, or either of those things, at all. The most I can bring myself to concede is that Durand actually gives a pretty good performance, but unfortunately it’s in service of the most ridiculously trite movie cop cliche of all time. Yes, it’s a slightly atypical horror movie (although not that atypical, especially given the renaissance in the last few years of vastly superior microbudget horror-dramas like RESOLUTION and ABSENTIA) but surely just atypical isn’t the same as actually good? I can’t see how any sane person could claim the approach here actually pays off in any meaningful way, especially since the drama we spend so much time pondering is so completely and utterly divorced from the actual horror elements. Things like THE BABADOOK or THE CANAL or IT FOLLOWS (all of which are vastly more eventful than DARK WAS THE NIGHT, despite their reputation as restrained psycho-horror) all expertly weave the psychological aspects into the structure of their internal horror mechanics; DARK WAS THE NIGHT feels like a dull drama which is superficially grafted to a routine monster movie; the two impulses never play off each other thematically.

Anyway, just being clichéd and cheap and lazy doesn’t automatically make it bad -- I’ve enjoyed movies way dumber and more incompetent, and recently. But come on, you gotta give us something. This offers only the clichéd filler parts of a movie, none of the actual genre goods. It’s not just an unimaginative B-movie, it’s an unimaginative B-movie with all the fun parts taken out! The only feature that distinguishes it from a million other instantly forgotten movies exactly like it is its ridiculously dour tone and relentless focus on its standard sad cop routine, which serves to make it unusually uneventful, but not in an especially memorable way. Mostly it’s just bland and generic, and, appropriately, even features a bland and generic off-brand Native American legend. Durand searches for the generic off-brand mythic Indian “Windiga” using the generic off-brand search engine “Searchitnow.com” to go to the famous online encyclopedia “Encypdeia.org.” Pfft! I know a genuine Panaphonics when I see one! And look, there's Magnetbox and Sorny! The monster looks pretty dumb when we see it, but at least it’s a dumb CG monster. That’s something. There’s dignity in that. Spending 80 minutes looking furtively at trees for what turns out to be a knockoff Spider-Man villain is just unacceptable. And to do it with such a self-serious aversion to even the vaguest hint of fun is downright sadism. To really twist the knife, the agreeably moronic twist ending even offers a hint that these guys were perfectly capable of supplying some dumb entertainment all along, had they deigned to do so. As it stands, though, the title font and the last shot are the solitary glimmers of actual enjoyment in the whole thing, and the end only because it’s so corny and ridiculous. Dark was the night, indeed.

*originally Laytonsville, Maryland, according to the synopsis of the script from 2009, needling one to ponder what else had been changed since then.

Oh I should mention: Nick Damici (STAKE LAND) appears here, hopefully adding to his momentum as a horror staple independent from his work with Jim Mickle. He's just as ill-served as everyone is by this dumb screenplay, but hey, it's not like Lance Henricksen hasn't been in a few duds too. You gotta grind 'em out to become an icon, and I think Damici has what it takes.

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2015 CHECKLIST!

Play it Again, Samhain

• TAGLINE: Evil's Roots Run Deep. I don't know what that means.
• LITERARY ADAPTATION: No, although supposedly in part inspired by the curious "Devils Footprints" incident in 1855, with the vaguest suggestion of the Native American "Wendigo"
• SEQUEL: None
• REMAKE: None
• DEADLY IMPORT FROM: USA
• FOUND-FOOTAGE CLUSTERFUCK: No
• SLUMMING A-LISTER: None, although Lukas Haas was kinda a big deal once upon a time, wasn't he?
• BELOVED HORROR ICON: Nick Damici
• BOOBIES: None
• MULLETS: None
• SEXUAL ASSAULT: No
• DISMEMBERMENT PLAN: I think there's a served arm at the very beginning, in a scene which looks suspiciously tacked on, possibly by producers who watched the final cut and realized that absolutely nothing happens in the movie until the final 10 minutes.
• HAUNTED HOUSE: No
• MONSTER: Yes, some sort of lizard man.
• THE UNDEAD: None
• POSSESSION: No.
• SLASHER/GIALLO: No.
• PSYCHO KILLERS (Non-slasher variety): No
• EVIL CULT: No.
• (UNCANNY) VALLEY OF THE DOLLS: None
• EGYPTO-CRYPTO: No
• TRANSMOGRIFICATION: None
• VOYEURISM: Nah
• OBSCURITY LEVEL: High, but currently on netflix streaming.
• MORAL OF THE STORY: Your title font should not be the best thing in your horror movie.
• TITLE ACCURACY: Night was reasonably dark, I guess. But then again, what else would it be? The title probably comes from the Blind Willie Johnson slide-blues standard Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground, but I don't know what that has to do with anything in the movie.
• ALEX MADE IT THROUGH AWAKE: N/A.

Hellraiser: Revelations

Hellraiser: Revelations (2011)

Dir: Victor Garcia

Written by: Gary Tunnicliffe

Starring nobody. Literally nobody.

So it’s come to this. The 9th film in the series (and so far, mercifully, the last) has one thing going for it that we haven’t seen in this series for awhile: It was actually written as a HELLRAISER sequel. The last time that happened was wa-a-a-a-a-y back in HELLRAISER IV: BLOODLINES, which, I know, not exactly a high-water mark of the series itself, but hey, at least it’s gotta be better than these generically dull mystery flicks where Pinhead shows up for five minutes at the end that they’ve been doing since HELLRAISER V: INFERNO, NO NOT THAT INFERNO THIS IS A DIFFERENT ONE AND ALSO THERE’S NO INFERNO IN THE MOVIE SO I CAN UNDERSTAND YOUR CONFUSION. I mean, if someone is actually intentionally writing this as a HELLRAISER movie, surely we’ll at least get some genuine cenobite action, a little extra Pinhead, maybe a skin-wearing scene or two, some fun incesty types, you know, the good stuff. And best of all, maybe we’ll finally get a Pinhead who’s not a sidekick (HELLRAISER IV), or trying to teach someone a lesson about being a nicer person (V, VI) or trying to prevent humans from defying death’s will(?!) (VII) or actually a character in a virtual reality simulation but at the end it turns out he’s real for some reason (VIII). So part IX definitely has that factor going for it.

What it’s got going against it is that it is, by a large margin, the cheapest, laziest, most tedious and amateurish HELLRAISER so far, an outing so rote and needless that even Doug Bradley refused to participate. Doug Bradley, who was in the SyFy channel PUMPKINHEAD 3. Doug Bradley, from WRONG TURN V. The same Doug Bradley who was in HELLRAISER: HELLWORLD. What does it take to get this guy to say no? Well, it turns out it takes making a movie in two weeks due to contractual obligations that required Dimension films to make a sequel or risk losing the rights to the franchise (a franchise which, obviously, was deeply important to them). Scraped together in a matter of weeks for under $300,000, this has every hallmark of a movie made for the wrong reasons by people who don’t really have any intention of making an effort. Hell, I suspect the only reason they wrote an original script was that it was quicker to just type up this piece of crap in an evening than it would have been to actually read through existing scripts and find one they might be able to retrofit with some Hellraiser trappings*.

Puzzlebox now available in Robin's Egg Blue.

Here’s the plot: two teenage buddies, Nico and Steven, vanish while vacationing in Mexico. They leave behind a camcorder (oh good, another found-footage horror movie) but no trace of their bodies or whereabout. Cut to an indeterminate time in the future, when their respective sets of parents have gotten together for the evening. Not to talk about the boys, of course, but to have a nice meal together in their isolated modernist home which is clearly owned by one of the producers. But their evening of red wine and awkward small talk is ruined by their daughter Emma, who wants to know why no one has apparently ever talked about this little mystery of the missing teens before now. Seriously, it appears that even though these two sets of parents know each other and regularly dine together, this subject just never came up. Emma was Steven’s sister and boyfriend to Nico (in clear violation of man law) so you can sort of understand why she’d like to, you know, address this issue, but the parents seem confused and uncomfortable and act as if asking what happened to their missing children is some kind of needless breach of decorum. They’re so suspiciously off-put by the whole subject that you have to suspect they’re hiding something, but no, it seems like it just never occurred to them to ask about it or look through the missing teens’ effects.

Yeah, a lot of the movie looks like this. Geez, how did no one ever think to make a horror ripoff of THE BIG CHILL before now? Pinhead really does have to do everything himself.

Emma’s a tough, no-bullshit kind of gal who wears a dress with a neckline that plunges literally to her belt while having dinner at home with her own parents, so she’s not buying this crap.** She watches the video from the camcorder that no one else ever bothered to take a look at, and whaddayaknow, turns out they got involved with some kind of mystery puzzlebox, a skinned guy, and the fakest lightning effects this side of HIGHLANDER. Well, that doesn’t tell us anything helpful without actually getting to look at that puzzlebox, but that’s impossible because they must have left it... oh wait, here it is. A couple gentle caresses later and bam! Steven’s back, though too traumatized to tell his story. But what’s this, is something lurking outside in the bushes? And why is everyone’s car gone? And the telephone lines cut? And also there’s no cell phone reception out here, sorry, should have mentioned that.

In keeping with the fact that they want to spend no money, this is essentially a single-set home intruder movie eventually ripping off, of all fools things, FUNNY GAMES. Pretty soon, a shotgun comes into play and people are forced to reveal their darkest secrets, which actually don’t turn out to be particularly dark because this is a DTV HELLRAISER sequel and they’re damn sure not going to waste any genuinely good ideas on it. I have to admit, though, that there is one semi-clever twist which comes along for the last act. It’s sort of stupid, but I’ll admit that I didn’t see it coming and it actually nicely pays homage to/rips off a trope of the original HELLRAISER which has long been absent from the series. Unfortunately there’s zero character development of any kind, so despite my modicrum of respect for the twist itself nothing whatsoever comes of it, it just means we shift to ripping off a different movie. I suppose it does qualify as revealing unknown information to the characters, though, which at least explains the “Revelations” subtitle, I guess. I wonder if they decided on the title first and then wrote the script around explaining it? Or does every writer of shitty horror sequels just independently realize that their film is all about revealin’ shit?

Who would have thought this tiny device had the power to ruin genre film making forever?

I dunno, man, shitty movies have been a staple of genre sequels since the dawn of cinema (remember when the people of the world came together and agreed to lose that BIRTH OF A NATION sequel?) but honestly this new era of shitty DTV sequels just seems so lifeless they barely even exist. I know I’ve complained about this before, but jesus, shitty movies were better when they were worse. It’s so easy for any jackass to put a film together now that you don’t have that baffling, inscrutable incompetence that used to add a little color there. Everything about this film looks like it was made by professionals -- I mean, the scenes are in focus, it’s edited properly, it’s lit OK, most of the story generally makes sense, the actors seem like they understand what acting is. But rather than improving things, that just makes it seem entirely bland, plastic, and disposable. Give me the days of obsessed maniacs doing mountains of blow, spending every dime on one crazy practical effects shot, and then piecing the rest of the movie together using outtakes and footage from other movies. That was an experience. That was unpredictable. There was something quixotic and intoxicating about being in the hands of such obviously irresponsible degenerates. This movie would not allow those guys on the set. This was put together on the advice of a major corporation's lawyers by a team of responsible college graduates whose main concern was coming in under budget and pleasing their bosses, just like the career councilor told them to. 

Even Kevin "Alan Smithee" Yagher, in making his horrible part IV, cared enough to fight for his idiotic vision to the point of taking his name off the compromised final product. I don't think the producers of this movie would even understand that sentence, let alone the sentiment. No one here has a personal stake, they're just doing a job. And it feels about as exciting as a well-managed PR campaign for Right Guard. Nobody wants to do anything interesting or ambitious because somebody might notice and make fun of them. Well, don’t worry guys, there’s nothing to make fun of here because there literally is nothing new here, period.

I don’t mind derivative. I’m on my 9th HELLRAISER for fuck’s sake. But REVELATIONS’ problem isn’t that it’s derivative, it’s that it’s boring. Simply put, it has no good scenes. Even the nearly-unwatchable HELLWORLD at least had a few fun set pieces, a couple decent kills, and Lance Henriksen. This one has none of that. It’s mostly exposition, or scenes of actors who are bad enough to be unwatchable but not amateurish enough to be funny talking past each other about nothing interesting. The cenobites barely appear more than they do in any other sequel, and they didn’t even bother to make any new ones. At least part VI has that doctor one with the exposed brain; this one just settles for doing sidekicks (a female Chatterer alongside our old buddy, and a son-of-pinhead who has nails instead of pins, ooh, scary). You know the series has finally run itself down when they can’t even be bothered to put some effort into a new cenobite with a dick stitched on its face or something. The makeup looks fine, but Jesus, could you possibly coast any more than giving us female Chatterer? Wait! Don’t answer that question yet. Instead, let’s look:

The face of failure.

Yup, it’s an off-brand Pinhead. Doug Bradley said no, and rather than taking the hint and just bringing back princess Angelika or something, they apparently decided Pinhead was like James Bond and you could just bring any asshole in to play him and we’d never notice. Why they picked this particular baby-faced weasel I’ll never know, maybe they always secretly wished that Pinhead looked more like a doughy Chandler from Friends.*** But yeah, if that isn’t the final insult, I don’t know what is. This puzzlebox is broken man, all I’m getting is pain, no pleasure whatsoever. I know what you’re thinking, it’s because this is an experience beyond limits where pleasure and pain are indivisible, but I’m telling you right now it ain’t. This is a clearly limited experience and it’s just pain, and not even a very interesting pain. More like an annoying pain that just won’t go away, like what I imagine period cramps are, or maybe like if you have to shit real bad. Must this experience be so aggressively humdrum? It’s as if they took the words of Pinhead in the original HELLRAISER a bit too literally: “The box. You opened it. We came.”

Yeah guys, but after he came, they did interesting stuff. Please don’t forget that part next time. How bout we focus on a different line for the next sequel: “We have such sights to show you!”

Or, if not that, then let’s just do “This isn’t for your eyes.”

This guy is a good summary for this turkey. Kinda tacked together.

THE WHOLE SORRY HELLRAISER SAGA:

1: HELLRAISER (1987)

2: HELLRAISER 2: HELLBOUND (1988)
3: HELLRAISER 3: HELL ON EARTH (1992)
4: HELLRAISER 4: BLOODLINES (1996)
5: HELLRAISER 5: INFERNO (2000)
6: HELLRAISER 6: HELLSEEKER (2002)
7: HELLRAISER 7: DEADER (2005)
8: HELLRAISER 8: HELLWORLD (2005)
9: HELLRAISER 9: REVELATIONS (2011)
10: HELLRAISER X: JUDGEMENT (2018)

*I Should mention that writer Gary Tunnicliffe is actually a makeup artist who's been doing the Pinhead makeup since part III. I can only assume that after all this time he's fucking sick of it and wants to kill the whole series once and for all just so he'll never have to work with all those pins again.

**The project details for the production tell us: “Emma - 18. Daughter of Ross and Sarah. She is lovely and inquisitive and on the verge of her own womanhood”

***Has anyone ever stopped to think about how fantastically meaningless that title is? Friends? Why not just call it “Show with People.”

The Exorcist II: The Heretic

The Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977)
Dir. John Boorman
Written by William Goodhard (with John Boorman and Rospo Pallenberg, uncredited)
Starring Linda Blair, Richard Burton, Louise Fletcher, with Max Von Sydow, James Earl Jones, Ned Beatty and Paul Henried

I should mention, I'm not really sure who the titular Heretic is. I guess Buron's Lamont character gets taken off the case and has to turn in his gun and his crucifix at one point but pursues the case anyway, so maybe it's him? Or maybe it's the demon himself? But if that's true, wouldn't all demons be heretics just by virtue of existing? I guess it could also be Louise Fletcher's psychologist character, since she's a woman of science. Obviously there are many possibilities in this rich tapestry of nuttiness.

Jesus fucking Christ. What the hell happened here? You got the great John Borrman (DELIVERANCE, EXCALIBUR, POINT BLANK) directed a sequel to THE EXORCIST, one of the greatest horror films of all time. You got Ennio Morricone doing the score, you got a crazy cast of great character actors, you got a fantastic production design which genuinely looks like nothing else I’ve ever seen. How could it possibly be this bad?

Who knows, but wow, it definitely is exactly as bad as everyone always said. The cast and crew are so strong I just sort of naturally assumed that this was one of those movies which everyone was wrong about, something which made people confused and angry by giving them something different and not just rehashing the plot of the original. But no. It’s horrible. Different, but horrible. Still though, you gotta admit that it’s not every day you get to see this level of money and talent put into something as fucking crazy as EXORCIST II. As a failure, it’s a colossal, towering failure which is endlessly fascinating in how utterly wrongheaded and incomprehensible it is at every turn. As far as I know, it’s the only movie ever to be pulled out of theaters TWICE for re-editing, that STILL went on to utterly fail to connect with audiences. Out of theaters. Twice. Well, if you’re going to fail, it might as well be a spectacular failure. More memorable that way.

They have this kind of cool effect where they superimpose the end sequence from the original over new footage in an effort to visually depict how much they completely fail to understand what was good about the original.

Boorman, later, seems to have convinced himself that my original idea was correct: that even though he made an interesting and worthwhile film people rejected it because it wasn’t as horror-focused as the original. He’s partially correct; one of its major drawbacks is that it’s a horror movie which simply contains no horror scenes whatsoever. But it has much bigger problems in that it completely fails to tell a comprehensible story, or manage a single scene which really works at communicating any element of theme or plot, on any level, at any time. Boorman laments that, “...it all comes down to audience expectations. The film that I made, I saw as a kind of riposte to the ugliness and darkness of The Exorcist – I wanted a film about journeys that was positive, about good, essentially.” Which is such a profoundly insane thing to attempt in a sequel to THE EXORCIST that I almost admire it. But the problem isn’t just that he made a film about “about good, essentially,” it’s that if that is, in fact, what he was going for, it still doesn’t come across in the film. It never seems like a film about anything. It just seems like a long string of barely-connected bizarre setpieces, obtuse metaphors, wandering storylines, and distracting flashbacks which simultaneously obsessively reference the original EXORCIST and have nothing to do with it.

The story itself seems to be about Regan (Linda Blair, again playing the role of a character named Regan who lives in Washington DC and is possessed by the devil, but still a few years too early for anyone to appreciate the irony) coming to terms with the reason for her possession, which, in complete defiance of everything that made THE EXORCIST terrifying, apparently was not just the arbitrary cruelty of evil's desire to corrupt innocence, but was in fact a crafty strategic move by the forces of darkness to destroy a Chosen One. Regan, it seems, is some kind of prototype human, an evolutionary leap forward blessed with the power to psychically heal people. And I guess one particular obscure ancient Assyrian demigod has a problem with that. So all you people who had nightmares about the original movie, I guess you needn't worry unless you are a psychic mutant destined to elevate the human race to a higher evolutionary plane.

Unaware of all this, Regan is currently under the care of nurse Ratched* herself, Lousie Fletcher, a psychologist who takes the novel view that the only way the emotional trauma of her possession can be healed is by never talking about her experiences or dealing with it in any way. Because of this brilliant fucking approach to mental health, she gets mad when Father Lamont (Richard Burton, looking confused as to what the fuck he’s doing here) enters the picture and starts asking Regan what the deal was with this whole exorcism thing. One thing fails to lead to another, but before long Lamont is in Africa looking for a similarly psychic boy named Kokumo (James Earl Jones, sporting an awe-inspiring giant locust headdress with antenna and everything. I really hope he got to keep that prop) for reasons which are not entirely clear. It does lead to a sequence which cross-cuts between Linda Blair tap-dancing and father Lamont getting stoned by Orthodox Christians in Ethiopia, which is definitely the kind of thing which ought to have become a staple of the series. To repeat: here's a phrase you don’t expect to encounter in a review of the sequel to one of the most iconic horror movies of all time: “Tap-dance sequence.”

The hat alone made it entirely worth making this movie.

[Spoilers from here on, though I’m not sure I’m 100% correct in my interpretation] I think Lamont gets possessed or something or falls in love with the demon, who turns out to be an Assyrian demigod with the unfortunately hilarious-sounding name of Pazuzu, “lord of evil spirits of the sky,” (a title the movie subtly drives home with approximately 40,000 funny POV shots of locusts flying around. Turns out Pazuzu is a real part of Assyrian mythology, but in English that name sounds like the kind of thing a 3-year-old would name his imaginary puppy, so it stands to reason that they insist on saying it constantly.) Anyway, who the fuck knows what's going on between Lamont and Pazuzu, or what the deal was with any of that.THE EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC defies your puny human ability to comprehend cinematic narrative. The only subsequent event I can describe with any confidence is the big climax, which kicks into high gear upon Lamont's return from Africa (hilariously visually signified by the colorful African “I went to Africa!” shirt he now wears under his priestly jacket). Once he's stateside again, the recently possessed Lamont (I think?) gets re-possessed by Father Merrin’s ghost, (?) picks up Regan, and flies to DC, where they go back to the house from the original for some reason (is the problem with the house, somehow?) and destroy it in a cheap special effects battle with Pazuzu (now taking the form of a separate identical but non-makeup’ed Linda Blair). They win because the possessed Lamont starts making out with Pazuzu (?!) but then has a change of heart, and then literally changes the demon’s heart by ripping it out. And that takes care of that, I guess. (Wikipedia claims, "In the end, Regan banishes the locusts [and Pazuzu] by enacting the same ritual attempted by Kokumo to get rid of locusts in Africa [although he failed and was himself possessed]." I don't know about any of that, but fine.) Also Louise Fletcher and the babysitter from Part I (?) also rush down to DC to join our dubious heroes, and for some reason the babysitter freaks out and lights herself on fire, but it has no discernible effect on the plot and no one seems too concerned about it.** The end. [End of possible spoilers]

Boorman apparently hated the original EXORCIST (and of course, who better to direct a sequel to one of the most iconic and popular movies of all time than someone who hated it?), so part of the problem with the film is its torturous relationship with the original material. It needs the original to have any reason to exist at all, but stubbornly refuses to incorporate or even pay attention to literally anything that made it interesting. Instead, it self-consciously tries to circuitously rope as many characters as possible from the original into this new scenario while completely removing everything that made them worth remembering from the original. For example, remember Sharon, the babysitter from the beginning of the first film played by Kitty Winn (PANIC IN NEEDLE PARK)? I hope so, because EXORCIST PART II is intermittently about what happened to her following the events of the original. This storyline is so ludicrously unnecessary that I have to assume it was originally meant to be about Regan's mother (arguably the protagonist of the original) but was changed to the babysitter after Ellen Burstyn flatly refused to participate. This is the kind of thinking that went into the film, that they thought they could change a storyline about the mother of the possessed girl to a storyline about her babysitter and it would still make sense. 

Von Sydow, hoping that if he hides behind this cool set we won't notice him.

And what about poor Max Von Sydow? He gets third billing here to return as Father Merrin, only to, for some reason, appear in awkward re-stagings of the possession scenes from the original. One of Linda Blair’s conditions for returning was that she didn’t have to wear the scary makeup again, meaning that you’ve got Von Sydow (looking embarrassed) reenacting some of the most classic scenes of his career with a body double and worse camerawork. Why, you ask, would you not just use footage from the original? Well, because those scenes also include Jason Miller’s father Damien Karras, who, for reasons known only to the makers of EXORCIST II, is retroactively written out of the original (talk about your exorcist!). So to fit the new continuity, we gotta poorly reshoot the best parts of the original in order to excise the main character. That make a lot of sense to anyone else?

Of course, there are some good things here. Chief amongst these is the production design, which is the one genuinely impressive thing anywhere in sight. There are some stunningly weird and surreal sets, particularly a wind-swept temple high on a cliff in Africa which requires pilgrims to climb up a long rope from the ground (it’s so cool they keep coming back here for more scenes even after it becomes obvious it is completely irrelevant to the plot). Even some less exotic locations are subject to a little production boost: the psychologists’ office has a weird beehive ceiling and all glass walls, a possibly metaphorical locust-focused lab in Africa seems to shift in and out of a kind of surrealism, a pointless scene of Lamont walking around asking random Africans in English if they know a guy named Kukomo takes place in a stunning, meticulously detailed mud city. If I understand it correctly, the central idea that human evolution is progressing to a new level and the demon is attempting to impede it (based on the ideas of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the real-life Jesuit/archaeologist that Father Merrin was modeled after) is kind of interesting, if entirely unexplored or even clearly articulated. And Ennio Morricone’s theme --a fucking insane mix of tribal chanting, frenzied wailing, and gothic liturgical grandiosity-- is among the most interesting and complex things he’s ever attempted. And hey, Ned Beatty appears in one scene which seems to exist so he can introduce his character and then never appear again. Always good to see him, and hey, that's Paul Henreid as the Cardinal!

Oh yeah, I forgot, there's this machine with blinking lights that causes people to be able to read each other's minds. I think it's a metaphor because it keeps showing up over and over even though it doesn't really contribute anything to the plot, but it's worth mentioning because no one seems to realize the implication of Fletcher's character having invented a mind-reading device. When Lamont exclaims that the existence of this device scientifically proves the reality of the human soul, Fletcher's character brushes it off, saying its just a tool for analysis. No one mentions or seems interested in any talk that such a device would have other, potentially lucrative and world-changing potential.

But all is ultimately for nothing, because the movie simply doesn’t work. No, actually, that's not even true; not working would imply a clear goal and a failure to realize that goal. THE EXORCIST PART II never even finds an objective to fail at. Boorman and co-ghostwriter Pallenberg were supposedly re-writing the script day-by-day on the set, which would make sense because the whole thing has a distinct feeling of a story being made up as it goes along. None of the scenes or storylines seems to meaningfully connect to each other, none of the labored metaphors seem to be supported by the events, none of the characters seem to even be aware of each other. There are scenes in this movie where Fletcher and Burton seem to be sort of talking past each other, only vaguely aware of each other’s presence and completely baffled as to what they're personally saying, let alone what in God’s name the other person is talking about. If I didn’t know better, I would assume that one of them was a CG character added in later. If you think Liam Neeson looking towards Jar Jar but not really at him in EPISODE I was bad, you should see Burton trying vainly to focus his eyes on Fletcher or Blair in this one. And these are genuinely good actors who are actually in the same shot together. That’s what Boorman’s script and direction have reduced them to.

As much as I admire Boorman and like his films, I think he probably deserves the blame here. I mean, no one much disputes that it was his vision guiding this thing, and in the end I think he mostly ended up with the film he intended to make. And he’s right, in a way, there are lots of interesting things happening here, but for whatever reason the final product is simply unable to convert a single one of its many strengths on paper into an actual satisfactory cinematic experience. There’s literally not a single thing that works properly anywhere on screen, ever. And, I feel like I need to point this out one more time: tap dance sequence. Boorman can’t be faulted for his bold take on the material, but I don’t know if there even exists a punishment suitable for bungling decent material this badly, although I guess maybe being recognized as the director of EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC for all eternity might fit the crime. Not only did he ruin this sequel to one of the greatest horror films ever, he put the whole series on the sad course of disappointments, reshoots, and studio interference that would dog it for the rest of its bedraggled life. Now what could have possessed him to do that?

* The insanity of casting Fletcher as a good psychiatric doctor just two years after the most iconic role of her career playing a despicable one is a microcosm of the movie's brazen defiance of any human logic.

**Their journey is funny, though, because for reasons known only to the writers of EXORCIST II they keep getting interrupted by car accidents where Fletcher has to get out and help. Then, when they finally get to their destination, their own car crashes but no one seems interested in helping the black cab driver. What the fuck are we supposed to make of that?

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2012 CHECKLIST!

LOVECRAFT ADAPTATION: No.
BOOBIES: Yeah, there's a long irrelevant scene where some dude shows off this African woman's titties to father Lamont.
> or = HERSCHELL GORDON LEWIS LEVEL GORE: A guy falling off a rock is about the best I can do for ya.
SEQUEL: And what a sequel.
OBSCURITY LEVEL: Infamous, but I suspect rarely seen.
MONSTERS: Demon, though we only see him in locust and Linda Blair form. 
SATANISTS: No, Pazuzu seems to do his own dirty work.
ZOMBIES: Don't think so.
VAMPIRES: Nope.
SLASHERS: Nah.
CURSES: I'd say Regan is kind of cursed.
ALEX MADE IT THROUGH AWAKE: She claims yes. I'm not so sure. But I have to admit that when pressed, she described the plot significantly more coherently than I imagine Boorman could. So I'm gonna say yes.