Boorman and the Devil Will Make You Want To Create Art

There is a particular flavor of horror in the artistic establishment's rejection—not the horror of a monster, but the horror of a vision so singular it reads as madness. Boorman's *Exorcist II* has long been the sacrificial lamb of "so bad it's good" discourse, a punching bag for critics who cite it as proof that the auteur theory has a fatal flaw. But what this article from Reactor suggests is far more deliciously subversive: the film's very weirdness is its power, a document of a creator refusing to replicate a formula. Instead of playing the studio's game of spiritual sequel, Boorman reached into the ether and pulled out something that resembles a fever dream broadcast from a dying television set. This resonates deeply with the speculative fiction sensibility, because Boorman has always been a world-builder, not a mimic. Consider *Zardoz*, that glorious, phallic-stone-helmeted vision of a post-apocalyptic future, or the Arthurian mythos rendered as a decaying, golden-dusted ritual in *Excalibur*. He treats the Devil not as a jump-scare antagonist, but as a conduit for psychic energy—a force that, once tapped, forces the artist to transmute their anxiety into iconography. The article’s argument is essentially a manifesto: to create art is to let the devil shake your hand, and Boorman accepted that handshake with a grin, even knowing the clerical establishment would brand him an apostate. The reassessment of this film is a pattern we see across all speculative media. We vilify the odd, the cryptic, and the emotionally dissonant because they deny us the comfort of narrative resolution. Yet, those are precisely the works that age into cult classics, becoming Rosetta Stones for future generations of creators. This piece isn't just a defense of Boorman; it's a broader critique of our knee-jerk critical rigor. It asks us to consider what happens when we sit with discomfort instead of laughing at it, to look at the strange, humming light of a "failed" masterpiece and recognize it as a porch light for the wandering artist. In an era where content is algorithmically smoothed into safe, tasteful shapes, Boorman's willingness to embrace the cacophonous, uncontrolled power of creation feels less like a cautionary tale and more like a call to arms. As this article asserts, by looking back at *The Heretic* without irony, we find a roadmap for how to court our own devils—to make art that is not merely good, but gloriously, infectiously alive. The source material is a testament to the idea that our industry's "garbage" might just be the compost in which the next improbable masterpiece grows. Source: https://reactormag.com/boorman-and-the-devil-will-make-you-want-to-create-art/