The Last Exorcism

*Spoiler alert* But I have them all hidden because of my magical powers. Actually I’m not sure if my plugin works for RSS feeds, so beware of reading further through some kind of RSS aggregator. If you ever ever want to see this movie, you do NOT want to see the spoilers. It would be like a friend telling you everything before you went to see Sixth Sense. Why bother seeing if you already know the kicker.

I know a lot of people that hate this genre of movie, “the shaky cam”. But someone out there must like it, because they have done pretty well at the theater. I actually liked Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity, but they are always a one viewing for me. Enjoy once, never need to see again. And I will definitely not see the part 2 that always seems to follow.

The main character, Cotton is an extremely charismatic  preacher who can praise Jesus and cite his grandma’s recipe for banana bread and the sheep(congregation) will give the same zealous “Amen” to both. He scams money from people by doing ‘fake’ exorcisms. Examples of exorcisms gone wrong that were used in the movie, are actual events that have happened in real life.

At this point of movie I’m feeling a little uncomfortable it was striking certain chords in my faith that made me think, “omg I can’t believe I’m watching this…” Religulous I loved and didn’t feel the least bit uncomfortable, but I love Bill Maher and actually have a lot of respect for him. Yes he is a little on kooky side, and we ‘definitely’ don’t see eye to eye on a lot of things, but i still love the way he thinks. Way off the purpose of this post, time to get back on the topic.

Beginning of movie actually really worked for me and had me hooked. But as we hit the midway point it very slowly started to slide backwards. This so called preacher who has scammed all of these people and lost his faith in God is starting to believe that just maybe she is possessed. Whether this was in a real life situation or Hollywood situation, you would think you would see some kind of inner struggle with the preacher. Makes sense in my world. Maybe a call to his wife at home, letting her know what he is going through. Some extreme heartfelt prayers asking for God to forgive him and make him worthy to try to help the girl.  I needed something to actually believe that this whole story was real. Isn’t the whole the purpose of shaky cam movies is to make it look realistic? Actress who plays possessed girl played the part rather well and there were a couple of spooky scare scenes, but they started to lose me on the realism at the halfway point and I never got it back.

The slow slide backwards suddenly became this huge avalanche during the last 10-20 minutes of the movie. I don’t know who’s ass they pulled out that last portion of the film, but it obviously needs to be shoved back. It felt like they didn’t know how to end movie and decided to go off on a totally different tangent. It became Rosemary’s Baby shot in Blair Witch Style. The only way they could of made it better was having all of the dialog sung.

Let me go over some of the other idiotic things in this movie.

How was this movie made? Did the devil or his cool cape wearing cult minions find all those tapes plus the camera that was left behind, edit, and add spooky soundtrack music? Since everyone involved in the making of the film DIED. At least Blair Witch they lead you to believe that these tapes were found and someone put it together to make the movie. Who the f$#@ is going to find these tapes in hickville and as if anyone will even miss the girl and father.

Movie just doesn’t make sense. How was her brother involved in the cult? Why would he let his father send for a preacher? Why would the devil girl cut someone that belonged to cult (her brother)? By him getting cut it just kept the preacher gang around and think about kidnapping her. What are the chances of non-believing preacher to pick the right devil girl was possessed with, prior to believing in possession? Why is it always a ‘girl’ possessed? Why was girl not showing, when she was at full term? How was she impregnated by the devil? Does the devil do the whole immaculate conception bit too? Why did I see this movie? Why is a medium slurpee $5 at AMC!?!?!

Walking back to work with my friend after the movie I said to her, “That movie was a lot like sex without the big finale.” I did say it much more crass, but I really try to keep things at a PG-13 rating. The foreplay was great, the sex was ‘eh’ and by the end you are really hoping to never ever see him again. So thanks for nothing Last Exorcism, thanks for nothing.

P.S. – Whoever is doing the remake of Rosemary’s Baby please stop what you are doing! This movie already did it, now you don’t need to do it.