“Oh no, not another exorcism movie!”

“Oh no, not another hand held movie!”

Are those complaints out of the way? Good. Time to ignore them for The Last Exorcism.

Bed
“Hey look, a priest and a girl. This is like all the othe-” “WE KNOW!”

Cotton (Patrick Fabian) is not your average evangelical preacher. He likes to have fun! He can get a congregation going lickity split, and praise Jesus like its his job. Because it is his job. His dad was a preacher, and he has been doing sermons since he was young. Heck, it is all he knows how to do. But he might be undergoing a crisis of faith. He doesn’t like doing it anymore, he doesn’t believe. He has been faking the exorcism thing for years; he isn’t a bad person, he is just giving a service that people request. But after the birth of his son, and some issues there, he now feels bad taking advantage of people.

Thus we have this movie. He is going to do one more exorcism, with a film crew, to help prove how phony it all is. Silly Cotton, you are about to get fucked.

But when he gets to New Orleans, home of a pretty intense blend of spirituality and culture, he finds out he needs to read his own fine print. Nell (Ashley Bell) is apparently possessed, but he hates exorcising children. Thinks it is a kind of abuse. But the father (Louis Hertham) insists. Strange family. After the wife died, started to home school his daughter, eventually keeping her locked up the whole time, but not his son of course (Caleb Landry Jones).

Well, all of her problems could be psychological. Could be abuse from the dad causing it. Or any number of things that I won’t mention. Who is winning this fight: Jesus, or science? Iris Bahr plays one of the film crew.

Barn
The chiropractor might be the real winner here.

Hey hey hey, this movie might not be all too bad. It isn’t just a simple exorcism story. Creepy girl, being creepy, with people dying. No, this plot might have layers. Layers, everyone! I love layers.

The idea that possessions are complicated, and surely there could just be people not all that right in the head.

Well, the ending I hated. Kind of came out of nowhere, didnt make any sense (from out point of view) and had some pretty dumb events going on.

But there are more problems. Documentary style movie is fine. But the fact that the cameraman was a character there that was never actually on camera, or spoke, or anything, is pretty spooky. When crazy shit is happening, he doesn’t scream, but he may run away. I think they forgot that they made him a character and pretended he didn’t exist.

I do think the buildup of this movie was pretty decent. Not a typical horror, having thriller elements throughout just to make seemingly average situations pretty unnerving. But a lame ending, that we now know lead to a sequel? Well, you just went average.

2 out of 4.