Film Review: The Last Exorcism

When it comes to exorcism movies, there's really only ever been one. That being The Exorcist of course. Sure, it may seem totally dated and at times even amusing these days in an age of 'torture porn' and many other gruesome spectacles, but in it's the day it was the scariest film ever made, I even remember hearing about how it drove one audience member at an early screening in London to take a dive off a bridge. Whether that's fact or just an urban legend, it's still adds to the films status.

It took a search on Wikipedia to find other exorcism films, my mind was so blank to them. You have 'The Exorcism Of Emily Rose', which I have yet to see, the various sequels to The Exorcist, and a few others dotted around (including Repossessed with Leslie Nielsen, a spoof of The Exorcist that starred Linda Blair!)

But that leads us to The Last Exorcism, another try at taking a different look at exorcism, and for a sizable chunk of the film it works, and works well.

It's filmed as a documentary that follows preacher Cotton Marcus (Patrick Fabian), who was brought up as a preacher even as a child, and even though he has his doubts about religion after the troubled birth of his son, he still does it. He's good at it, that and performing exorcisms. Cotton sees most demonic possessions as things that can be explained away, usually by putting any strange behaviour down to psychological reasons.

To prove this he allows a film crew to join him as he travels to the farm of Louis Sweetzer (Louis Herthum) who believes his daughter Nell (Ashley Bell) is possessed. After performing his regular 'fake' exorcism, Cotton returns to his hotel on the way back home, but later that night finds Nell sitting in his room, with zero explanation as to how she got there.

Whilst 'mockumentarys' are not the most original idea in horror (or movies of any genre) these days, The Last Exorcism is mostly executed very well, with a wonderfully slow build up to some genuinely disturbing moments throughout the films 87 minute running time. The cast were pretty much unknown to me (although the son of Sweetzer (Caleb Landry Jones, did show up in X-Men: First Class as Banshee) which always helps when you are trying to watch it like it's real, big stars always take you out of it.

Although I did have an issue with music being used. It's supposed to be a serious documentary, wouldn't have suspenseful 'horror movie' music used throughout cheapen the subject matter? A minor quibble.

What wasn't a minor quibble, however was the ending of the film. And I mean the VERY ending, literally the last two minutes, which made precious little sense and was totally at odds with the tone and pace of the rest of the film. I spent most of the film hoping it wouldn't get silly, as these things can be prone to do, but this went far beyond mere silliness, it just was preposterous and really took what was a very good film down a peg or two.

***
If you stop watching where they stop in at the gas station near the end you have a atmospheric, tense and creepy exorcism movie. But if you carry on, things get ludicrous and you have another film to chuck on the pile of average and forgettable exorcism movies.  A massive shame.