Legion

Due to the financial success of The Exorcist film, a sequel was ordered (The Exorcist II: The Heretic) which had no involvement from the original writer and director and was universally panned. William Peter Blatty then wrote a screenplay for what would have been a sequel to the original film that ignored the second entry. William Friedkin, the director of The Exorcist, was attached but backed out. Blatty turned his inactive script into what became the novel, Legion, which he eventually re-adapted and directed in 1990. The majority of the book is dialogue, so it’s… show more.

I prefer this book to Blatty’s The Exorcist. The story of the return of a character from the original story who happened to be thoroughly dead, of demons more powerful than Pazuzu of The Exorcist, of the seemingly magical ability of the possessed to escape detection after murdering people lend a sense of creepy mystery to the book. Blatty is obsessed with the possibility of death being annihilation, and this is also my greatest fear. The level of sophistication in the discourse is exceptionally high for a horror novel, but this does not detract from the terror or… show more.