Unsurprisingly, the horror maestros at Lions Gate have manipulated the trailers to make this one seem a lot scarier than it is. Not to say the jump scares don’t work, but they are few and far between. This is more an experiment in genre mismatching and a major character study.
On the note of character, the Last Exorcism does excel, and the Reverend Cotton Marcus is a fascinating one. Although raised as an evangelical pastor by his family, he believes exorcisms are a sham, despite performing them on a regular basis. When an autistic child dies during another’s botched ritual, he decides to bring a camera along to his next exorcism and expose the hoax once and for all.
So Marcus and his crew head to a farmhouse in Louisiana where a man claims his daughter Nell is possessed, which Marcus believes is rather psychological. After a staged ritual with hidden speakers and electronic devices to trick the family, all believe they have rid the girl of either the demon or this misdiagnosed mental state.
Of course the movie is far from over, when freaky stuff keeps happening. Nell appears mysteriously in the crew’s hotel, she violently attacks her brother, butchers a cat, and spews obscenities left and right.
Whether she’s just a disturbed girl requiring psychotherapy or a full-fledged exorcism remains a mystery until the 11th hour, when the plot escalates into pretty climactic territory.
In the tradition of Blair Witch, Paranormal Activity and Cloverfield, the Last Exorcism presents its story as fake found footage, though in this case, many more liberties are taken with the in-camera edits.
Unfortunately, this should have livened up the pace, but audiences might find some of the proceedings a tad dull before the rushed climax and frustrating finale.
It’s certainly interesting to see how documentary has influenced storytelling in fiction, allowing filmmakers to pull off a lot more on miniscule budgets, but the sub-genre is becoming increasingly contrived.
It’s annoying when the film just ends, because something nasty has happened to the individual handling the camera. We’ve seen the same sudden jump cut in all the others, and we’re not fooled into thinking its real enough to forgive the lazy, unfinished storytelling. I think it’s time for a less ‘mysterious’ shtick.
