The Last Exorcism

You can pinpoint the exact moment that The Last Exorcism flies off the rails, and that's a real shame, because up to that point, the movie had been pretty engaging. This is a movie that starts out intelligent and fascinating, turns mildly creepy and still interesting, goes on to lose much of its power but still holds our attention, and then wraps up with an ending that's sure to send audience members walking out of the theater mumbling and angry.

The movie is the latest in an increasing number of "docu-horror" films, that are set up like documentaries, and do their best to fool us into thinking we're watching real life. Sometimes these movies work, as in last year's Paranormal Activity. But here, I was never quite convinced what I was watching was real. Despite the low budget, director Daniel Stamm gives the movie a little too much polish. All of the actors are convincing, but there's something phony about the camera work that seems a little too professional, and ruins the illusion, especially when the special effects eventually take over. But before that, we're introduced at the beginning to a charismatic pastor named Cotton Marcus (a strong performance by Patrick Fabian). He's a showman who relies on everything from drama to even magic tricks and special effects to thrill his many followers when he gives sermons about Christ and the Devil. But, as the film opens, he's starting to have a crisis of faith.

He tells us that he was practically forced into the ministry as a child by his father (also a pastor), and never saw any reason to question what he was doing. He readily participated in fake exorcisms and performed "miracles" all in the name of money to help pay for his son's medical expenses, since he does not have insurance. But when he read a newspaper article about a boy who died during an exorcism, he began to have a guilty conscience about what he was doing, and decides he wants to debunk the practice of exorcisms once and for all. He hires a film crew to follow him on what will be his final exorcism job. He plans to use the documentary to expose the ritual as a sham.

The exorcism job takes him to a run down old farm house run by a fundamentalist named Louis Sweetzer (Louis Herthum), who believes that demons are in control of his sweet 16-year-old daughter Nell (Ashely Bell). The farm animals are being slaughtered in the middle of the night, and young Nell finds herself covered with blood when she wakes up in the morning, no memory of what happened. Cotton believes that he can explain everything through rational means. After all, both Louis and his son Caleb (Caleb Jones) don't exactly come across as the most trustworthy individuals. I liked the ambiguous quality of these early scenes. We're never quite sure who to trust, and the movie does a good job of building an atmosphere inside the home that is close-knit, but also unsettling.

Cotton performs the exorcism as planned, complete with plenty of effects and tricks, which he walks us through before actually performing it. He assumes the job is done, and heads back to his motel, ready to return to his family the next day. That night, however, Nell shows up in his motel room in a catatonic state. What happens next, I will not reveal, but at this point The Last Exorcism seems to be building up to something special and truly creepy. There are a couple eerie moments here and there, but the movie loses its ambiguity, and soon turns into endless scenes of Cotton and his camera crew sneaking around dark halls of the farm house, while demonic voices whisper on the soundtrack. The cast is what was keeping my interest. They're wonderfully honest, even when they are possibly facing supernatural forces, and create a mounting sense of dread and panic.

Then comes the ending, which I will not reveal, but will say that I spent the last 10 minutes hoping that the movie wasn't going where I thought it was going. Sure enough, it was, and we get an ending that will probably elicit laughs rather than screams. Why the filmmakers chose to go with this route, I do not understand. It doesn't even make any sense from a logical standpoint. I'm trying hard to avoid spoilers, but should you see this movie, ask yourself this - Given what the cameraman was looking at, why did he go on filming for as long as he did? And why does he insist to keep on filming as the movie closes? This is one of those moments that kills the illusion of reality the movie tries to create. If what we see was actually being filmed, the cameraman would have probably dropped the dumb film equipment, gotten in the car, and be halfway down the driveway by the time the movie actually ends.

The Last Exorcism is a well made film that unfortunately decides to cheapen itself as it goes along. It starts out smart, intelligent, and kind of intriguing, but doesn't hold onto that approach as long as we'd like it to. The filmmakers clearly have a talent for the genre. Now all they have to do is find an ending that is fitting of everything that came before it.

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