The Last Exorcism (Lionsgate)
Not As Bad As You Heard, Not As Good As You Hoped
The Last Exorcism is a movie filmed like a documentary a la The Blair Witch Project but that is a trick that never holds up in the movie. It is an interesting aspect for a while but quickly develops into just a facet of the filming. The basic movie is a troubling tale of a minister faking exorcisms in order to bilk believers out of their money.
Cotton Marcus (Patrick Fabian) is the minister who gets a change in conscience and decides to film his last exorcism to expose the fraud. He takes a director and cameraman along with him when he goes to Louisiana to help the Sweetzer family. Nell Sweetzer (Ashley Bell) is the teenage daughter of Louis Sweetzer (Louis Herthum), a widower and the parent of Nell and her brother Caleb (Caleb Landry Jones).
Louis has had some of his farm animals slaughtered and he thinks Nell is doing it because she is possessed by a demon. Nell has no recollection of any of this. Cotton agrees to do an exorcism and this leads to even more complications.
The acting in the movie is good. Fabian is at his best playing the smooth tongued huckster. Whether preaching to a crowd of believers or exhorting the demons to hit the road, the torrents of words flow freely from the ministers mouth.
Bell is also very good as the possessed Nell. She projects the worldly innocence her character must have, and also projects the insanity that lurks inside her. Caleb Landry Jones is adept at being a hulking presence around the borders of Nells world.
The film is rated PG-13 for mild profanity and some violence.
The film has some scary moments but it is not a grandly scary film. There are more suspenseful moments than scary ones and the shaky camera effect only makes an impression for a short time. Finally we wonder why this guy is hanging on to this camera when he seems to be scared to death. He is either the most dedicated cameraman ever or it is all faked for the film (which if course it is).
The premise is a good one but by the time the film ends it appears the writers just didnt know where to go with it and the movie just sputters to a weak conclusion. The first half the film is an engrossing one with a lot of promise but those promises are never fulfilled and the film settles into movie of the week status.
The Last Exorcism is not scary enough to be a fright flick and not smart enough to be anything else.
I scored The Last Exorcism a devilish 3 out of 10.
