Boorman and the Devil approaches a notorious movie failure through an unusually productive question: what happens to the people whose sincere creative efforts become someone else’s punch line? David Kittredge’s documentary centers on John Boorman and the troubled making of Exorcist II: The Heretic. Its subject offers more than an opportunity to reconsider a sequel. It invites a distinction between judging the finished work and understanding the lives invested in it.
Scope and spoilers: This is a critical reading of the documentary’s verified premise, reported interview material, and Kittredge’s public explanations, rather than a firsthand screening review. It discusses production setbacks and retrospective disagreements.
John Boorman: Living Beyond the Verdict
Boorman occupies two positions in this story: the filmmaker who made consequential decisions and the older man asked to revisit them. That distance matters. A production account can identify what went wrong; a retrospective interview can explore what the experience continues to mean.
Kittredge told UPI that Boorman initially described the experience as an unresolved wound. The director also explained that his documentary was conceived neither as mockery nor as a campaign to establish the sequel as a neglected masterpiece. His interest lay in the ambition, skill, and commitment behind it. [Kittredge’s UPI interview](https://www.upi.com/amp/Entertainment_News/Movies/2026/08/28/Boorman-and-the-Devil-Exorcist-II-interview/2251787769829/)
That gives the story a compelling emotional premise. Boorman need not win an argument about the film’s quality for his experience to deserve attention. The meaningful question is whether he can explain a painful undertaking without being reduced to its reception.
My reading is that this distinction offers the documentary its strongest foundation. Artistic responsibility and personal dignity can coexist. We can ask a director to account for choices without treating public humiliation as an adequate explanation of them.
The Collaborators Complicate the Auteur Story
Peg Aloi’s account of the documentary describes interviews with Linda Blair, Louise Fletcher, and writer Rospo Pallenberg, among others. It also reports major screenplay changes and Boorman’s serious illness during production. Those elements complicate any explanation based entirely on one director’s unchecked imagination. [Aloi’s account of the documentary](https://artsfuse.org/334508/film-review-boorman-and-the-devil-a-filmmakers-demons-exorcised/)
Consider the problem from an actor’s position. A performance develops around an understanding of motivation, relationships, and where a scene belongs in the larger story. When the underlying screenplay changes substantially, the actor’s work may survive while its intended context disappears. This is a general filmmaking problem that makes the reported revisions especially relevant to a character-focused reading.
For a writer, revision brings a different tension. The person asked to solve an immediate production problem may later be judged against an earlier conception that could no longer be filmed under the same conditions. That does not excuse unsuccessful writing. It does make the assignment more complicated than locating a convenient culprit.
The presence of multiple participants matters for the same reason explored in our discussion of how documentary participants shape authorship: the person at the center of a film does not own every meaning of the events it records.
When Conviction Becomes a Liability
One revealing line emerges in an interview with Kittredge about the documentary. The interviewer remembers a confession about the sin of “hoobris”; Kittredge corrects its attribution to Pallenberg. The reported line is: “I may have committed the sin of ‘hoobris.’” [Kittredge’s discussion of the line](https://moviejawn.squarespace.com/home/2026/9/2/david-kittredge-interview-features)
The tentative “may” makes the remark interesting. It leaves room between recognition and certainty. Looking backward, confidence can resemble arrogance, but the distinction is difficult to establish while a difficult film is being made. The conviction that sustains an ambitious project can also make warning signs easier to dismiss.
That is a richer conflict than the familiar lesson that filmmakers should restrain themselves. An artist who abandons every unusual choice at the first objection may never create anything distinctive. An artist who treats every objection as proof of originality risks losing the ability to evaluate the work. The documentary’s subject sits directly inside that uncomfortable overlap.
A Sequel Carries an Audience’s Expectations
In his UPI interview, Kittredge described Boorman’s preference for a dreamlike, expansive approach and acknowledged the difficulty of presenting that approach to viewers expecting another Exorcist. This helps clarify the conflict without making either side automatically correct.
From the filmmaker’s perspective, repeating an earlier success can seem artistically pointless. From the audience’s perspective, a sequel’s title carries a promise. Buying a ticket in expectation of a particular kind of experience is not evidence of hostility toward art.
The useful critical question is how a film teaches viewers to engage with its departure. Does it establish a persuasive emotional logic? Do its formal choices help us understand what the characters need? Strangeness alone cannot answer those questions, just as familiarity cannot guarantee success.
This connects with our examination of what filmmakers owe an existing audience. Creative freedom remains essential, but inherited expectations are part of the material a franchise filmmaker works with.
Understanding Is Different From Acquittal
Aloi reports an emphatic contribution from critic Stephanie Zacharek: “Exorcist II: The Heretic is a great movie.” That declaration belongs to Zacharek. It should not be mistaken for a consensus or treated as the documentary’s compulsory conclusion.
Its value is that it introduces a real disagreement. A sympathetic account becomes less useful if every participant must arrive at the same verdict. Some viewers may appreciate individual images, performances, or ideas while finding the complete film unsuccessful. Others may discover that the very qualities once dismissed are what they now value.
My critical position is that a making-of documentary earns its place by improving the questions we ask of a film. Explaining the labor behind an image can deepen our attention. It cannot, by itself, establish that the image works within the story. Effort deserves recognition; effectiveness still requires judgment.
The Deeper Meaning: A Career Is Larger Than Its Worst Moment
The most persuasive interpretation of Boorman and the Devil concerns the danger of letting a verdict become an identity. Once a production acquires a notorious reputation, the people involved can become supporting characters in a story already assumed to be settled.
Returning to their testimony reopens that story. It allows confidence, disappointment, pride, and regret to exist together. None of those feelings requires us to change our opinion of Exorcist II. They ask us to recognize how little a dismissive verdict explains about making it.
A Background Detail Worth Watching For
Aloi identifies the sword from Excalibur and a stone mask from Zardoz in Boorman’s interview setting. These are visible career references rather than a secret puzzle. Their interpretive appeal is simple: the troubled sequel exists inside a larger creative life.
That is where this documentary’s subject becomes most moving. Failure may remain failure. It does not have to remain the only story anyone is permitted to tell.
Original content by this site's editorial team. Published: September 19, 2026 at 18:14:18 PDT (Los Angeles time)
