Four years after the events of The Exorcist, and Regan is now living in New York, where she is under the care of an eminent child psychologist, Dr Gene Tuskin. Although seemingly quite balanced, Dr Tuskin is concerned that Regan is much more vulnerable than she appears to be and is keen that the girl undergo some form of hypnotherapy to help her recover from her terrible ordeal.

Despite Dr Tuskin's concerns that Father Lamont's intervention may cause the girl further harm, Regan takes a shine to him and agrees to the hypnotherapy session provided that Father Lamont can be present. Reluctantly agreeing, Dr Tuskin introduces them to a new machine, which uses pulsating lights to hypnotise patients and helps Dr Tuskin go further into their subconscious. But when Regan goes under, it becomes clear that the demon, Pazuzu, is not so much exorcised as laying in wait. It is left to Father Lamont and Dr Tuskin to do their best to save Regan from the demon's clutches once more.

The storyline - for what it's worth - is uninteresting, pointless and completely out of kilter with the original movie. Whereas the first film very quickly built up Regan's ordeal and centred solely on the key event (possession and exorcism) The Heretic is far messier, with characters and locations drifting around all over the place in a rather ridiculous fashion. An attempt is made to introduce us to the origins of Pazuzu, showing how Father Merrin first came into contact with the demon whilst working with natives in a remote part of Africa. Pazuzu's intentions / actions never really seemed to make much sense to me and despite the suggestion that the demon is really rather powerful, Father Merrin seems to make short work of him time and time again. Woven around the tales of Pazuzu - including a pointless follow-up visit by Father Lamont - is some ridiculous premise around locusts, blending the reality of an African locust swarm with the suggestion that Pazuzu's power comes from the wind. Hence, we are "treated" to regular aerial shots, filmed as though we are seeing things through the eyes of a locust. If it sounds ridiculous here, you should try watching the film.

The problem with The Heretic is really the attention to detail - often lacking, occasionally blatantly so. Apparently, Linda Blair (Regan) refused to wear the grotesque make-up from the first movie again, and so flashbacks of her original possession are filmed with a completely different actress, who looks absolutely nothing like her. The hypnotism / trance scenes become completely mixed up, with one character's trance quickly becoming confused with another. In the film's climactic scenes, Regan's house is virtually levelled to the ground, but it takes ages for anybody to come and see what's going on - and then suddenly the street is full! And then, mistakes aside, the general feel of the movie lacks any visual flair. The African scenes seem almost entirely comprised of poorly lit studio footage. The locusts are in it far too much and make for very uninteresting viewing. Worse still, despite being a supposed horror film, the film isn't actually very horrible at all, with only occasional gore and absolutely zero scary bits whatsoever.

There are two trailers - one is a full cinematic trailer that does, somehow, manage to make the film look fairly exciting, although watching it is rather like watching a 120-second edit of the film, which in itself is probably quite appealing. The other trailer, referred to as a teaser, is shorter, and plays more to the suggestion that this film will follow the original into cinema history.