The shadow cast by The Exorcist is so large and looming that all horror and exorcism movies made in its wake have an uphill climb; William Friedkin took a B-movie genre and made a grade-A film, and no one has been able to come close to anything similar, despite numerous attempts. So if you are setting out to make a film about an exorcism now, what can you do to either up the ante or separate yourself from the pack?
The Last Exorcism set out to be a little different and it might take a lot of audiences by surprise. The trailers and commercials sell a straight forward horror film, but the movie itself takes its time and manages to develop the characters before bringing the hammer down. And even when that hammer comes down and crushes everything, it does so in a way that comes out of left field and kind of throws the whole thing out of whack.
The story starts with the awesomely named Reverend Cotton Marcus (Patrick Fabian, Saved by the Bell: The College Years) discussing his role as a local pastor at his father's church, and how he grew up preaching and giving sermons. He excelled at it, and had people shouting and jumping for joy in church, but he has reached a point where he's not sure exactly what he believes anymore. This extends to his family's generations-long practice of exorcism, and with a two-person film crew (one of whom is Iris Bahr from the Orlando-area production Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector), sets out to somehow prove that exorcism has always been a big con.
So with The Last Exorcism, we have a man who doesn't believe in exorcisms coming across what appears to be a very real demonic possession situation. He meets a family that lives out on a farm in the middle of nowhere, and the father believes that his teenaged daughter Nell (Ashley Bell) has been besieged by a demonic spirit. Cotton tries one of his elaborate exorcisms, and this scene is awesome in how it shows crazy stuff happening in the bedroom and then cuts back and forth to Cotton explaining how he did certain tricks. He then leaves the family, believing that this form of therapy will help them and that the exorcism and possessions were all hose jobs anyway. And then Nell shows up at Marcus' door, and the movie takes off into this whole world of intrigue - the Reverend tries to convince the father to take Nell to a head doctor, but he won't have any of that secular, non-Godly stuff. "Psychiatry is not of God!" (I'm sure the American Association of Christian Counselors and the psychiatry division of the Christian Medical Association will love this movie).
The film makers (producer Eli Roth and director Daniel Stamm) take their time to establish these people and also takes the time to establish the mood and atmosphere, and it all works pretty well. The whole thing is done like a first-person documentary type of deal, lots of talking to the camera and occasional interviews while people yell at the cameraman to turn it off. Thanks to "reality" TV and to sitcoms adopting a Christopher Guest mockumentary style, audiences have grown more accustomed to this type of presentation - when it was original in 1999 to do The Blair Witch Project in this fashion, now it is almost expected to have low budget movies take the fake documentary approach. If anything, this will make people more open to watch actual documentaries, the genre of film long held at arm's length by the movie-going public. And there is some clever use of music in this movie; since it is all documentary style, most scenes play out without any sort of music, and when music is used, it is very subtle and moody and atmosphere building, and stays classy for the most part.
Spoilers in this paragraph! Fo' real! - The ending kind of blows the whole thing though. The finale involves the solving a mystery that wasn't necessarily a mystery right away. It was only in the very end did the Reverend and his little film cohorts realize they were being swerved to a degree by the locals, and they end up uncovering a crazy demonic cult of some sort, headed by a local country pastor who is leading the local teenagers in what appears to be Satanic rituals. They pull a demon-baby from out of Nell and toss it into a bonfire, at which point the Reverend tries to stop the whole thing with his little plastic crucifix and the film makers run off into the woods, only to be murdered. This sudden twist at the end and then abrupt ending is kind of weak. I would have liked if they had started to uncover this demonic cult stuff earlier, in which case maybe the ending would have felt a little more organic to the story and not so out of place, but instead the movie is totally chugging along doing on thing and then takes a hard left at the end, without allowing for any time for the audience to wrap their brains around it. It's a shame, too, because I was with the movie the whole time, waiting for a good ending to wrap it all up, and instead I was pretty disappointed about where they took it. Spoiler-laden paragraph over!
The Last Exorcism is not bad. Good ideas and a weak ending. This is hardly new in the cinema world, or unique. There is a dearth of good horror films out there, and this one has enough chills and scares to make for a good time, but I would have to warn you about the kind of wacky ending. Maybe a DVD viewing of this would be better, unless you absolutely have to have a horror movie right now, in which case, you could do a helluva lot of worse. Damning with faint praise? Sure, why not.
The Trailer Rundown:
Don't Be Afraid of the Dark - a Guillermo Del Toro joint, this trailer really tells us nothing about the story or movie. So the only thing I have to get excited about is Del Toro as a producer.
The Virginity Hit - a typical teenager trying to lose his virginity movie, except this one is updated for modern kids, so it involves lots of references to Youtube and has that whole mockumentary vibe.
Buried - this trailer is cute but it doesn't show us much either. I'm looking forward to seeing that this thing is all about.
Saw 3D - and I am totally not looking forward to this one. Lionsgate hopes the 3D bump will make this their most lucrative Saw installment yet. We'll see when Halloween rolls around.
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