Horror Nerd Cinema Bonus: "The Last Exorcism"

For whatever reason, the "exorcism" sub-genre of horror movie has always failed to leave a lasting mark on me. It's strange, considering that I'm probably just the target demographic to be moved and terrified of just such a story. I live in middle America, I'm a practicing Catholic, and in general the very concept of demons scares the ever-loving bejeebus out of me. For this reason, I walked into "The Last Exorcism" with high expectations, both for the implications that it might have on me personally, but for the advance reviews and buzz (which have been quite good).

And...*sigh.* Just *sigh.* This is one of the most frustrating movies I've seen in recent memory, but not because it's bad or terrible. In fact, quite the opposite. For a long time, "The Last Exorcism" is a damn good movie, well-acted by its principal lead actors and shot with energy and gusto by director Daniel Stamm. Nope, the problem with this flick is perhaps the most maddening problem that a movie can have - namely, the final act that implodes. Walking out of the theater, I was reminded of the 2007 Hilary Swank film "The Reaping," which had essentially the exact diagnosis that this film suffers from. For the better part of an hour and a half, we were taken in and moved by the story of the small town suffering from biblical plagues and Swank's potential redemption, only for the story to turn gimmicky in the finale. Unfortunately, the same goes here.

Our main character for this go-round is Reverend Cotton Marcus, who is played with plenty of energy and heart by Patrick Fabian. The opening ten minutes of the film give us a shockingly deep character background for Cotton, beginning with his upbringing as a minister's son called to preach at his father's Evangelical church to his adult days and his family life. The film sets up its potential A-B character arc with the story of Cotton's own son, who almost died in childbirth and wound up with severe hearing problems, causing Marcus to have a crisis of faith and eventually make it his life's work to disprove exorcisms. Well, in one of those almighty movie coincidences, he gets a hand-written letter (complete with plenty of capitalized PLEASE HELP invocations to prove its level of SRS) from a farmer who claims that his daughter is possessed by the devil. With two camera operators in tow, Marcus heads out to the farm to catch his act of "false exorcism" on tape as a way of proving that exorcism is really just a substitute form of therapy.

It goes without saying what happens here. Cotton meets the family - father Louis (Louis Herthrum) and Nell (Ashley Bell, who is excellent in the role), the cursed daughter. Believing her problems to be nothing more than teen angst and issues dealing with the death of the family mother years prior to the events in the film, he performs his exorcism, utilizing strings attached to the bed and paintings in the room to achieve theatrical William Friedkin-style effects. Of course, this winds up pissing off the very REAL demon that inhabits the body of Nell, and the real meat of the movie begins.

Despite its formula, the opening and middle chapters of "The Last Exorcism" are very effective stuff. The original "Exorcist" showed us a Priest who had his doubts about exorcisms; this flick gives us a snarky new-age preacher who flat-out admits to the cameras that he doesn't believe in demons. As the creepy incidents in the movie begin piling up (and make no mistake, there are some VERY creeptacular moments contained in this film, with the silence enveloping my packed theater and tightening it into a knot), the story draws us in. While Cotton doesn't really show much sign of conversion, I found myself really rooting for the character to pull through and achieve redemption, which is the absolute BEST thing that any feature film can do. The movie hits you with its wallop of a second exorcism scene, with the best scares in the entire movie getting thrown together with fantastic acting by Fabian, who runs the gamut from disbelief to quiet resolve as he attempts to piece together what he is witnessing.

Then the film's third act begins, and it all falls apart.

I won't get into the specifics of what "The Last Exorcism" becomes in its final trimester, but the gist of it is this - as a whole experience, the film feels like an M. Night Shyamalan movie, later years. Its promising build-up and likable characters get tossed aside for twists, and not twists of the good, unexpected variety. The film is shot in the cinema verite style throughout its duration, which does an excellent job giving it a realistic, earthy quality throughout the first and second acts. As the final twenty minutes tick by, it makes the many red herrings, loose ends, and *SHOCKING REVELATIONS* seem all the more ridiculous. The movie feels like it fails on its intended level, robbing us of the chance to root for a character to pull through and replacing closure with Vince Russo-style swerves.

"The Last Exorcism" is definitely not a total failure. It is definitely scarier than any Eli Roth movie, whose name appears prominently on the theatrical poster (he produced it). It contains what is hopefully a star-making turn for Ashley Bell, who actually TOPS the creepy, eerie presence that Linda Blair had in "The Exorcist." In this movie's harrowing middle section, Bell shows remarkable ability, unnerving the audience by doing little more than just staring into the looking-glass camera and ever-so-subtly smiling. Great potential that hopefully Hollywood doesn't miss the boat on just because she doesn't have the poster-girl figure that the industry looks for. In the end, however, the movie is a mixed bag at best and cringe-worthy at worst. To make it more apparent at how far off the rails the ending flies, my entire theater audience left the building in laughter.

** 1/2 out of ****.

The Rage and Fury Omnibus, Part VIII: This is the end, my only friend, the end...

OK, first things first...there are, in fact, two more movies in the "Ju-On/Grudge" franchise. I will, however, not be covering these films in this he-ah omnibus. Why, you ask? Well, laziness, for the most part. These films just came into my possession a few months ago, at which point I posted them as Horror Nerd Cinema Bonuses. My short, short review - these flicks, while not directed by Shimizu and not featuring Takako Fuji, are pretty friggin' good, and definitely worth your time if you've got some spare change and a region-free DVD player. If you just can't go on living without some of my patented hard-hitting analysis, here you go:

http://ihrregistry.blogspot.com/2010/05/horror-nerd-dvd-bonus-ju-on-white-ghost.html

OK, now that all the movies are out of the way, I figured I'd end this little self-indulgent manifesto by posting a few thoughts on just what I find so appealing about this series. There's evidence to the contrary on a few message boards that the Horror Nerd may or may not frequent, but "Ju-On/Grudge" enjoys a very deep grassroots fandom. Just like the people who can quote every word that Bruce Campbell utters in Sam Raimi's "Evil Dead" trilogy, there are a number of diehard Saeki clan fanboys/girls who can likely name every chapter in the Japanese series in chronological order. And if you have no idea what that last sentence is all about, you either (a) haven't been reading my blog, dammit! (b) aren't a fan of "Ju-On."

The first complaint I hear from people who dislike this series is that it's the same as every other J-horror film. Nothing could be further from the truth. "Ju-On" is so utterly unique within the confines of not only J-horror, but the horror genre itself. I could probably be proven wrong by some absolutely godly horror fan with encyclopedic knowledge, but the Japanese movies in the "Ju-On" franchise are the only horror films I can think of that use the "Chapter jump" structure, linking between not only different events in the same films, but within the larger framework of the series. Whoa, what was that all about?

Screw all the intellectualism, if you want badass villains, this is the place to be. Nowadays, we're used to seeing horror movies with emo bad guys, usually with some unnecessarily tragic back story that's meant to make us blur the lines between good and evil. This plot dynamic has even snuck into the holy trilogy of horror movie villains, as Rob Zombie haphazardly gave Michael Myers an incredibly dumb and cliched troubled childhood. This year's "Nightmare on Elm Street" remake devoted a lot of time to the notion that Freddy may have, in fact, been FRAMED for the molestation that got him lynched by the angry mob. And Platinum Dunes' "TCM" reboots? Ugh, just ugh.

Not so here. The characters of Kayako and Toshio most assuredly met a violent end, sure, and are sympathetic on some level. The films, however, show us none of this; their pasts exist only as legend. What we see of them are their actions; how they genuinely enjoy not only killing their victims, but scaring the ever-loving s**t out of them beforehand. Most importantly, they're also played by supremely talented people in each and every film, with Takako Fuji and Yuya Ozeki serving as the embodiment of evil.

If these pictures from Deviantart aren't evidence enough, people tend to make a strange connection with pure evil played extremely well. In much the same manner that Robert Englund became a household name in the '80s playing a child-molesting, burn-scarred supervillain, Takako Fuji enjoys similar levels of superstardom in her native Japan for playing the perfect J-horror killing machine. Sociologists fail to explain this phenomenon, but it's there, and nobody can deny it. Give us an unrepentant monster, the absolute biggest, baddest force that nobody in a series of films can even hope to contend with, and we will get behind them. The "Ju-On" and "Grudge" series did this extremely well. Hell, it wasn't until the American "Grudge 3" that there was even a HINT that Kayako was beatable, let alone killable. And yeah, I know that ain't a real word, spellcheck, but suck it.

The end-all, be-all of this manifesto, however, is that this entire series was the result of the conviction of one Mr. Takashi Shimizu, a guy that I hold the utmost level of respect for. "Ju-On" was his baby that he nursed from a small segment on a Japanese horror anthology show, and saw blossom into a horror juggernaut on two continents throughout the first decade of the 21st century. It survived re-castings, remakes, retreads and that truly strange third U.S. film to post two new entries just one summer ago. And while Shimizu hasn't been involved in the series since 2006's "The Grudge 2," he has stated in the past that after he has accomplished other goals in his native Japan, he is interested in filming "Ju-On 3" for Japanese audiences - WITH Fuji back in tow. Of course, this reporter is still hoping for the ultimate dream project that would send not only myself but the many dedicated "Ju-On/Grudge" fans into a collective nerdgasm...

...Wait for it...

"Grudge 3D."

Just imagine that for a moment, will you? The movie series that had the jump scare perfected like no other, with the ability to leap its villains out at the crowd in ways that succeeded in making the audience gasp and let out a breath of fresh air like no other, in live, vivid 3D. A Kayako crawling right off the screen at the viewer, Toshio popping up in the most inopportune places, and any other number of ways for the group of cursed characters to meet their doom - all in living, breathing three-dimensions of glory.

Of course, I know that this is nothing more than a pipe dream at this point. It hasn't even been rumored, let alone talked about. However...there is a "Ring 3D" coming out sooner or later. If that does well, life could possibly be injected into this project, as "Ring" was the series that duked it out with "Ju-On" for supreme J-horror rulership throughout much of the late '90s and early '00s. Thus, what we as horror fans all need to do is attend "Ring 3D," preferably multiple times, to ensure that this happens and ensure that the Horror Nerd can die a very happy man.

This is the end...my friend. The end of the Rage and Fury Omnibus, and the end of me waxing rhapsodically about Kayako, doomed families, guys named Takashi and Taka, and meandering chapter structure. I'd say more about how much I love "Ju-On/Grudge," but after eight posts exclusively about this subject, I don't want to think about it for a good long while.

Happy Friday the 13th!!

The Rage and Fury Omnibus, Part VII: "The Grudge 3" (2009)

While not a bad film by any stretch, "The Grudge 3" is definitely one of the more disappointing movie-going experiences of my life. I don't know how accurate it is to say "movie-going," since, well, this one came straight to DVD. More of a couch-going experience, huh?

The reasons for this are many, but the biggest is undoubtedly the box-office take of the previous film in the franchise. While the first American "Grudge" remake/reimagining/what-have-you was a ginormous success, grossing more than $100 million worldwide on a miniscule $10 million budget, the second was decidedly less popular. Some attribute it to the fact that the American public had begun to grow disenfranchised with the novelty of Japan-style horror thrillers here in the States, others simply say the movie wasn't as good, but for whatever the reason, "The Grudge 2" pulled in FAR less money on a larger budget than the first. Thus, writer/director Takashi Shimizu's original plan for the U.S. series was immediately shelved, resulting in not only Shimizu but Takako Fuji leaving the series.

Which leads us to this film. The first two movies had been building up toward an epic climax; "The Grudge" was the introduction to the madness of the Saeki clan, "The Grudge 2" was a dark escalation toward a global virus. Logic seemed to dictate that the third film in the trilogy focus on Kayako and Toshio declaring war on humanity across continents. With a much lower budget, this was impossible. Instead, "The Grudge 3" focuses on the small, and is almost a callback to the original "Ju-On: The Curse" film from Japan. Its characters are few but well-developed, while its scares are played out in extreme slow-burn fashion (as opposed to the occasionally frenetic and rapid-fire pace of "The Grudge 2").

In this regard, the movie works; the goal of a horror film (most of them, anyway) is to get us to care about what is happening on the screen, and to make us root for several of the fictitious people to live through the wave of death. Perhaps unfairly, I don't like this flick quite as much as I should, just because the knowledge of what could have been - a "Grudge 3" WITH Fuji in front of the camera and Shimizu behind it, perhaps a $50 million budget, and extensive shoots in both Tokyo and Chicago - lingers in the back of my head. Kind of like a bastard redheaded fungus.

Long enough introduction for a direct-to-DVD flick that likely no one but me gives two s**ts about?

THE MOVIE!

Well, we're back to a straightforward plot description this time, because "The Grudge 3" is a very straightforward film. There's no time jumps, chapter breaks, or any other assorted flim-flam associated the series up to this point. It goes from A to B with a definite three-act dramatic structure, and does it well. Simplicity is beauty, right?

The film opens with Jake (Matthew Knight), the lone surviving member of the cursed family from "The Grudge 2." Now, he's batcrap insane, spouting off the story that, of course, the authorities don't believe - that a creepy, long-haired croaking demon is coming after him at the most inopportune moments. Seems logical enough, right? Ten minutes into the movie, he's dead in a scene that does a good job building up a sense of dread for the remainder of the plot. These scenes also introduce Jake's disbelieving psychiatrist Dr. Sullivan, played by "Saw" goddess Shawnee Smith.

Indeed, this film focuses exclusively on that apartment complex contained in the Chicago segments of "Grudge 2" and the source of Jake's primal terror. Almost as if by magic, we are then taken inside the building, which is going through some very tough times. Tenants are leaving left and right. Our starring characters this time are three siblings living there - there's Max (Gil McKinney), the proverbial "fill-in father" and superintendent of the complex; teenage Lisa (Johanna Braddy), who wants nothing more than to bang her boyfriend in random apartments and leave Chicago for New York City; and little Rose (Jadie Hobson), whose story actually makes us give a damn about the outcome of this familial unit a great deal. It seems that Rose is a big burden on the older siblings, as she has asthma to a crippling degree. The central conflict of the film is that Max wants Lisa to stay in Chicago for Rose's benefit, while Lisa can't get away from her siblings fast enough.

That's your setup, but, of course, this wouldn't be a "Grudge" film without the deaths, now would it? This is where the film suffers a little bit; while the scenes themselves are nicely set up and well done, the characters who serve as "in-between deaths" on the path to the big climax are window-dressing at best. Marina Sirtis, Counselor Deanna Troi herself, is in this film as an artist in one of the surrounding apartments, and that's all there is to be said about her. There's also a couple nameless victims near the beginning of the flick - a teenage girl and her worried mother. Compared to all previous films in the franchise, which featured a wide array of characters that we held at least some emotional interest in the doomed characters. With the exception of Smith's sympathetic Dr. Sullivan, not so here.

What else is there to mention...oh right. No Takako Fuji this time around. When "Grudge 2" was released, an interview with Fuji cropped up on a lot of the horror websites. In it, she explicitly stated that she had grown tired of playing the role, but would gladly return to it as long as Takashi Shimizu kept directing the movies and wanted her back. Well, no Shimizu this time. Instead, "Grudge 3" was directed by a British gent named Toby Wilkins, who does a decent enough job with the budget he's given, which unfortunately wasn't large enough to bribe Fuji back with a massive payday. Instead, Aiko Horiuchi steps into the Kayako facepaint this time around; it would be easy to hate on her considering that Fuji had made this role her own just as much as Robert Englund did with the Freddy Krueger character, but other than sentimental reasons, it's difficult to say much bad about her. Horiuchi is definitely into the part, she's got the mannerisms down, and even has some ballet and contortion background, just like Ms. Fuji. So completely from an objective and non-fanboy looking glass, five gold stars for Ms. Horiuchi.

One thing that I can't award gold stars to, however, is the side plot involving - MAJOR SPOILER ALERT - Kayako's sister. Yup, Kayako had a sister as a child, and in a major plot convenience, knows the exact means to take the baddest bad girl in movie history down. Not only that, but as the movie closes, and Kayako is defeated in very underwhelming fashion, this is the character that we're left with if they ever decide to do a "Grudge 4," which is very likely, considering that this DVD made $38 million in gross sales on only a $5 million budget. END OF MAJOR SPOILER

"The Grudge 3" is a strange film at times, switching between family drama with the engaging central siblings to horror-thriller with random apartment mates in jarring manner. There are elements that work very well, especially the transformation that the Max character goes through during the course of the film, along with the tender story of Rose and her playful relationship with Toshio. Unfortunately, there are also elements that fail, such as the one contained in the SPOILER ALERT and the decidedly less-than-epic nature of the story's plot. Let's just put it this way - under normal circumstances, if this had been a stand-alone film, I would have given this flick a very positive review, but as the third and final movie in the U.S., bigger-budgeted version of "Ju-On," this is a let-down.