MovieChat Forums > The Exorcist III (1990) Discussion > Overrated and a mess

Overrated and a mess

posted 3 days ago by DevonteHuntley (275)

While shot well and have a good story and suspenseful moments, it fails quite a bit that many fans want to overlook:

1. The recasting of Kinderman and Dyer really hurts because the characters don't look or feel like the same ones from the original.
2. The Jason Miller/Brad Dourif switcheroo can be a bit distracting. I sort of like it and sort of don't especially when you're never really "seeing" Karras here.
3. Kinderman's family feels like afterthoughts. I'd do away with them altogether. They only came into importance when the Gemini Killer was out to kill them, but there should have been more story meat with them beforehand.
4. Father Morning....enough said. Never understood why Blatty just didn't make the head of the church (Father Riley) the one to do the exorcism since he's already an establish character rather shoehorning in one who didn't exist.
5. The Pazuzu angle just felt really forced in because he didn't come about until the end and the Gemini Killer was basically wasted. To have those two entities and Karras apparently inhabiting the same body felt a bit overkill. Ugh...this should have been handled better. I'd just left Pazuzu out of it altogether and just had it be the Gemini Killer in the body.
6. If calling this "The Exorcist III' was such a problem given the reputation of the sequel, then why even have "III" in there? All the studio wanted was the name "Exorcist" to be in the title, not that it had to be called "Exorcist III".

These are the main issues I've had with the movie that rather ruins it. Blatty dropped the ball with this one. If certain actors couldn't come back, then there's no reason to bring back their characters even if this is based on his book with those returning characters. As an Exorcist sequel, it needed more of an exorcism angle...maybe during those reshoots that costed $4 million apparently, we could have had a dream sequence or flashback with us witnessing the Gemini Killer under some demonic possession and is priest father trying to exile a demon from him.