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 ****.
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