lastexorcism

Movie Review: The Last Exorcism

HORROR

The Last Exorcism (LIONSGATE)

STARS > Patrick Fabian, Ashley Bell, Louis Herthum, Caleb Landry Jones, Iris Bahr

DIRECTOR > Daniel Stamm

RATING > 2/5

OPENS > AUG 27

Don’t you hate it when you’re just starting to get into a movie that’s been moving along weirdly (but not badly) for an hour or so and then the writer or director decides to just totally give up and toss you an ending that seems like it belongs to an entirely different film? We’re trying to not give away too much here, but that’s exactly what happens in The Last Exorcism. Look, we’re all for untidy endings. We don’t need everything we see wrapped up with a nice little bow or anything like that—far from it. But dudes—and by dudes, we mean director Daniel Hamm and screenwriting team Huck Botko and Andrew Gurland—What. The. Fuck?

Part Blair Witch Project (to which the movie owes its “found footage” Handycam cinematography style), part The Exorcist (duh), The Last Exorcism initially delivers all of the standard-brand, demon-in-my-daughter-flick trappings you’ve come to expect since William Friedkin’s genius 1973 original introduced everyone to Linda Blair and projectile vomiting. 24-year-old Ashley Bell plays 16-year-old Nell Sweetzer, the allegedly possessed daughter of an oppressively religious Louisiana farmer (veteran character actor Louis Herthum) who calls in slick Baton Rouge preacher Cotton Marcus (Fabian, whom you might recognize as Ted Price from the last season of HBO’s Big Love) to cure Nell of what ails her. Though Marcus has performed many an exorcism in the past, he’s bullshitted his way through all of them, and he brings along a two-person documentary crew to prove that his scam actually “cures” people as long as the victim—and in this case, her paying father—believes it. Throw Nell’s suspicious and vaguely threatening older brother Caleb (Jones) into the mix, and you’ve got yourself a decent (if derivative) psychological thriller.

Until it turns into a bad remake of Rosemary’s Baby. Just like that. No warning, no explanation, no nothing. It’s entirely possible that only Hamm, the screenwriters and producer Eli Roth (Hostel, Cabin Fever) know why this happens. But it’s just as likely that they don’t. Which is too bad, because all of the performances work—especially those of Jones and Bell as the brother and sister. There are some genuinely creepy moments, too. But then it’s like Botko and Gurland got stuck and didn’t know how to finish it off, so they punted. And missed. And everyone else just shut their eyes and went along with it.

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