Capsule reviews.

Exorcist III, Mieko Kanai, Norman Rush, Eras

The Exorcist III (William Peter Blatty, 1990)

Going in I knew exactly one thing about this movie, which is that Jeffrey Dahmer apparently really liked it. I sort of assumed it was terrible—not for that reason, there’s no real reason Dahmer would have worse taste in movies than the next guy, but it just seemed likely that a sequel to The Exorcist, a movie with a pretty definitive “it’s over” ending, was going to be bad.

But actually, it was good. A lot scarier than The Exorcist. And sort of more interesting—while The Exorcist is a well-oiled machine that does everything it sets out to do (in his original review, Ebert commented on “the difference…between great art and great craftsmanship”), Exorcist III is all over the place, especially as it lurches towards its conclusion and the influence of external meddling starts to show. It’s funnier, especially at the beginning, when George Scott’s Lieutenant Kinderman and Ed Flanders’s Father Dyer have a bickering buddy comedy rapport they keep g…