BOORMAN AND THE DEVIL (2026)

Boorman and the Devil is a fascinating and engrossing exploration into the madness and methods behind one of cinema’s worst movies and the filmmaker who risked career and health to bring his abomination to life.

Exorcist II: The Heretic lives up to its reputation as one of the worst movies ever made. That doesn’t mean, though, that much effort and even innovation went into making a sequel to one of the biggest horror movies of all time, as the documentary Boorman and the Devil attests.

Directed by David Kittredge (Queer for Fear: The History of Queer Horror), Boorman and the Devil not only delves into the making of Exorcist II but also the ideology that the film’s director John Boorman hoped (yet failed) to exhort: The Exorcist was a film about “evil” while Exorcist II was a film about “goodness”. Boorman hated The Exorcist to such a degree that he essentially replaced the film’s deeply Catholic religious foundation for a hybrid of hokey sci-fi and new-age spirituality, an exchange equal to trading a nourishingly rich meal for a turd burger.

This approach from Boorman - who is interviewed for the documentary, alongside Exorcist II stars Linda Blair and Louise Fletcher, as well as numerous crew - is both fascinating and confusing, yet makes all the sense in the world when considering how Boorman fumbled a $14 million production in such spectacular fashion.

Yet accept this did the executives at Warner Bros., and so filmmaking hell followed with continuous rewrites, unsafe working conditions, a leading man in Richard Burton whose alcoholism affected his on-screen performance, and Boorman hospitalised for several weeks after contracting valley fever from sand flown onto the Burbank Studios set to replicate the African desert.

Boorman and the Devil presents all these stories and testimonials into an exhilarating package that works as both a postmortem and a tribute to Exorcist II and its filmmaker. The talking head interviews are exceptional in their candour, with Boorman a contemplative figure who still stands by his work on Exorcist II and the impact it had on his personal and professional life. Kittredge, who also edits the film, compliments the interview footage with archive materials and nifty animations, with one of the best moments featuring William Friedkin’s hilarious anecdote about a screening of Exorcist II that almost turned into a riot.

While Kittredge doesn’t succeed in redeeming Exorcist II: The Heretic (whether that be his intent or not), what he does do with Boorman and the Devil is remind that even the worst films are made with energy and passion, especially during the 1970s era of New Hollywood where numerous filmmakers found themselves unable to reach the lofty ambitions of their respective projects.

While time has been kind to the likes of Sorcerer and Heaven’s Gate, Exorcist II: Legion remains a terrible, misguided film. Boorman and the Devil, on the other hand, is a fantastic documentary.