The Exorcist is rightly considered a peerless religious horror classic that still has the power to unsettle the most sceptical of viewers. In America, they take it much more seriously, and at a screening of the recut version in 2000, I sat with a spellbound and terrified audience which made for an electrifying cinema experience. John Boorman’s completely misguided sequel, even viewed unconnected to William Peter Blatty’s original, is like an embarrassing TV movie made by people with too much money. If it had been made in the Eighties, that money would have at least been snorted through a bill. Boorman didn’t know what to do with the source material or his cast. What’s left is an embarrassing mess best avoided. Go straight to Exorcist III, the superb and unfairly ignored follow-up.

2/10