The horror movie The Last Exorcism didn’t look great from trailers. It reminded me of the overrated slop The Blair Witch Project, but The Last Exorcism turns out to be something of a surprise after all. A well-made, creepy chiller and look at exorcism in the rural heartland of America. The movie is also fairly well-acted (another thing Blair Witch was not) and has a few creepy moments along the way. The movie is set up as a documentary following a smug fraud preacher named Reverend Cotton (well-played by actor Patrick Fabian) who visits a family where the father believes his daughter is possessed by something evil. The movie does a nice job exploiting the situation for maximum horror and the film works until a goofy, jaw-droppingly stupid final scene that does its best to ruin the entire movie.
The blu ray picture and sound is quite good for what is a pretty low budget flick. Some very nice extras include three commentaries, a making of featurette, and a documentary on real life exorcism. The Last Exorcism is a nice package and a pretty good movie until the final scene. It’s a goofy and incoherent finish for a movie that raises some pretty strong ideas and is an effective time killer for horror fans. The Last Exorcism gets a mild recommendation, but with a stronger ending, it could have been so much more.
Grade: B-
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John
Feb 19, 2011 -
I rarely, if ever, defend bad acting but I think you’re suffering from a mis-perception as regards the performances in Blair Witch. You said of Last Exorcism; “The movie is also fairly well-acted (another thing Blair Witch was not).”
Well, it was and it wasn’t. The point of The Blair Witch Project (1999, David Myrick Eduardo Sanchez) was that what we were seeing was a documentary. The three lead actors were supposedly college students lost in the (maybe) haunted woods with a camcorder. They weren’t, within the film, professional actors. As a result, their “performances” were not those of actors but rather they “acted” like terrified collegians. As they should have.
Rather than think the film “overrated slop,” I found Blair Witch, while less than perfect, an effective little chiller. The hype was the problem more than was the film itself.
Magnus782
Feb 21, 2011 -
A surprisingly decent film that lost some cool points for having a cliched & over-the-top ending.