This horror film is surprisingly tame for something with Eli Roth's name attached to it (he produced it), but these days that's a compliment. Eschewing the grisly emphasis on bodily dismemberment that has pretty much come to define the new breed of creatively constipated horror directors, "The Last Exorcism" opts instead for some clever storytelling and a building sense of creepy dread. It mostly succeeds, except for a lame ending, and because of that I had almost the exact same experience watching this as I did "Paranormal Activity" last year.
All told, I think "The Last Exorcism" is the better movie. Full of actors I'd never seen before giving very good performances, it's a fake documentary about an evangelical minister who brings a camera crew with him to film an exorcism, in the hopes of exposing the business as one big fraud. What to do, then, when this man who rolls his eyes at the thought of demonic possession begins to suspect that he might be facing the real thing?
Much of the movie leaves the question as to the girl's actual possession ambiguous -- are her demons of the supernatural variety or are they the product of a severely dysfunctional home? Since I think problems of the mind are always scarier than the oogie boogies we can see and touch (after all, mental problems are much more real and much harder to deal with), the movie is most frightening in its middle sections, before secrets are revealed and plot points click into place. The ending, a mish-mash of "Rosemary's Baby" and "The Blair Witch Project," feels like what it is: a hard sell ending to a horror movie that would have been better to end with a shiver and a shudder rather than a shriek and a howl.
Grade: B
All told, I think "The Last Exorcism" is the better movie. Full of actors I'd never seen before giving very good performances, it's a fake documentary about an evangelical minister who brings a camera crew with him to film an exorcism, in the hopes of exposing the business as one big fraud. What to do, then, when this man who rolls his eyes at the thought of demonic possession begins to suspect that he might be facing the real thing?
Much of the movie leaves the question as to the girl's actual possession ambiguous -- are her demons of the supernatural variety or are they the product of a severely dysfunctional home? Since I think problems of the mind are always scarier than the oogie boogies we can see and touch (after all, mental problems are much more real and much harder to deal with), the movie is most frightening in its middle sections, before secrets are revealed and plot points click into place. The ending, a mish-mash of "Rosemary's Baby" and "The Blair Witch Project," feels like what it is: a hard sell ending to a horror movie that would have been better to end with a shiver and a shudder rather than a shriek and a howl.
Grade: B