When horror movies find something successful, they'll run it into the ground. In the 1970s, the chosen theme was religious horror. Movies like The Exorcist, The Omen, and Rosemary's Baby were all the rage. Though it died off with the arrival of the '80s slasher boom, religious horror has recently popped back up with The Exorcism of Emily Rose, the remake of The Omen, and two separate prequels to The Exorcist.It eventually would cross paths with a more recent horror trend in The Last Exorcism, a combination of old-school religious horror and the modern "found footage" filmmaking technique. Although I was a bit hesitant to see it at first when I noticed Eli Roth's name attached as a producer, I'm glad I gave The Last Exorcism a shot, because it's a pretty cool little flick.
Meet Reverend Cotton Marcus (Patrick Fabian), a popular evangelist from Baton Rouge who has reached a spiritual crossroads. Despite his family's reputation as successful exorcists, Cotton himself doesn't actually believe in the existence of demons. Instead, he views what is thought of as "demonic possession" as really being a psychological problem. Instead of actually removing any sort of malevolent spirits, Cotton just performs some cheap parlor tricks to swindle trusting believers out of their money and convince them they're at peace. He's bringing a sliver of comfort to people and nobody's getting hurt, so he never really had a problem with it. But after he hears of an autistic boy who was smothered to death during an exorcism, Cotton's conscience gets the best of him and he decides to get out of the game.
As a way of confessing how he is defrauding people, Cotton allows a camera crew to film a documentary about his final exorcism. This particular job will take him to the rural Louisiana farm of Louis Sweetzer (Louis Herthum), a devout fundamentalist who believes his teenage daughter Nell (Ashley Bell) is possessed by a demon. While Cotton's phony exorcism goes according to routine, things quickly take a disturbing turn. Not only do the Sweetzers call that farm home, but so does a terrifying evil that Cotton may not be any match for.
The Last Exorcism is one heck of a movie. There's no denying that. It's not so much scary as it is haunting, which I find works a lot better. A typical scary movie probably won't stick with me for very long, but a movie like The Last Exorcism... I'm still getting chills thinking about scenes from it. Granted, there are a few flaws that I'll get into shortly, but The Last Exorcism is an effective, downright frightening horror movie that I can't recommend enough.
Director Daniel Stamm does an amazing job helming the movie, creating an unsettling atmosphere with the simplest of setups. It takes nearly an hour for the really frightening stuff to start happening, but Stamm manages to establish an uneasy feeling of dread even as Cotton arrives at the Sweetzer farm. I'm sure it's hard to make one of these "found footage" movies when you don't have a ton of money or the backing of a major Hollywood studio like Cloverfield or Quarantine, but Stamm does it effortlessly.
There are a few flaws with the direction, however. The primary flaw is that Stamm keeps cutting to reaction shots and odd angles that couldn't possibly work if the crew only had one camera. It's especially obvious during the second exorcism attempt in the barn. Why would anybody want to film anything other than the girl whose neck and spine are twisting in impossible directions? If most "found footage" movies are guilty of having characters film crazy things when they should be running away, then Stamm is guilty of having his characters filming stuff that's less interesting.
And I know some movie critics will speculate on why a "found footage" movie will have music, but I thought it worked for The Last Exorcism. I typically enjoy Nathan Barr's music to begin with, and the score he's composed for the movie is just as creepy as the visuals it accompanies. If the movie absolutely needs music, then Barr's was the best they could have possibly hoped for.
And then there's the screenplay, written by Huck Botko and Andrew Gurland. None of the reviews I've read online have really mentioned Botko and Gurland, which is a shame because I thought they did a pretty good job. Granted, their script isn't perfect, but it gets the job done. The only really profound flaw I found is that I felt the ending was way too rushed. It's like they painted themselves into a corner and had to condense a 15-minute ending into three. It makes for a more intense ending, sure, but at a certain point, you'll want the movie to slow down and take the ending one step at a time.
And really, the ending is the worst part of the movie. The last two or three minutes come completely out of nowhere, with only one throwaway line at the beginning of the movie even remotely hinting towards it. That line is so minor that you'll almost forget that it was even said at all, and with absolutely no other clues or references to what happens in the ending, it feels like they just dropped a big ol' ball of stupid into the audience's lap. To tell you the honest truth, the ending would have been okay had the movie been maybe ten or fifteen minutes longer to tell you just what the hell was going on and make up for the total lack of sense that it makes.
The best part of the movie, however, is its cast. Some of the performances are better than others, but there's none that I can say are actually bad. I don't know how many times I've gotten to say that, but there really isn't a bad performance in the movie at all. The best one comes from Patrick Fabian, who is likable, engaging, and charming in his role. He's sincere in the part, and even very funny, as evidenced in the scene where Cotton works a recipe for banana bread into a sermon just to see if anyone in his congregation notices. And even though he's playing a lying huckster who's made a career out of ripping people off, Fabian plays him in such a way that you can't help but care about him.
The other two performances that really stand out are Louis Herthum and Ashley Bell. Herthum plays his role with conviction, and really does a lot to add to the movie. Until the last ten or fifteen minutes or so, you'll probably start thinking that Herthum's character may be a little darker than he acts, which really works in the movie's favor. Thanks to Herthum, you'd be totally justified in initially thinking that maybe there is no demon, only a religious whackjob that abuses his kids. He's great in the role, so I have to give credit where credit is due.
And Ashley Bell, if I do say so myself, is excellent. Outside of the scenes where she violently lashes out against people, her performance is mostly understated, something that I liked. In a movie like The Exorcism of Emily Rose, the possessed person is a sobbing, emotional wreck when he/she wasn't having fits of demon-induced mania. Bell, on the other hand, plays the role with confusion, sadness, and shock. And really, she's just so darn adorable in those scenes that you want to see her character find the peace she's looking for. Bell is convincing enough, and I was thoroughly impressed by her work.
It's been over a decade since The Blair Witch Project introduced the "found footage" genre to the public consciousness. There hasn't been a movie like it that I thought achieved the same level of creepiness until The Last Exorcism came along. I mean, I loved the [∙REC] movies and Paranormal Activity, but The Last Exorcism has been the only one that's been able to match the movie that all other "found footage" movies are inevitably compared to. But even without comparing it to The Blair Witch Project, the movie is totally worth seeing. Not everybody will like it, but that doesn't change the fact that The Last Exorcism is great. So on my usual scale, the movie gets four stars and a proud seal of approval. Movies like this don't come along every day, but it's good enough that I wish they did.
Final Rating: ****
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