READER BEWARE: Opinions Are Expressed Below
I'll admit it...I'm a sucker for movies that have the home recorded effect. I'm talking about the nauseating, shaky camera movies like The Blair Witch Project, Cloverfield, Quarantine and Paranormal Activity. It's kind of a sick pleasure to watch the alleged real footage of inevitably doomed (and stupid) people. The Last Exorcism follows this same formula.
"If you believe in God, you must believe in the Devil"
The central character is Cotton Marcus from Baton Rouge. When Marcus was a little boy, he rose to fame in the religious community as the leading expert in performing exorcisms. He soon followed in his father's footsteps (who had 150 exorcisms underneath his old belt) and became a charismatic evangelical minister. All was going well for Marcus until a young boy from Harrisburg, Texas was suffocated to death in order to cast his demon out. This is the point when Mr. Miracle reveals his true colors. You see, all of the exorcisms Marcus performed were money grubbing scams. So with guilty conscious and doubted faith in hand, Marcus sets off to set things right. Marcus takes a documentary crew behind the scenes to show them how "un-real" his (and others) exorcisms are by performing one last time on camera.
Through random selection, Marcus chooses his last exorcism and answers the pleas of Louis Sweetzer who claims his daughter Nell is possessed by the devil himself. With camera crew in tow, Marcus sets off to the Sweetzer Ranch located in the deep backwoods where demonic superstition runs rampant. Here in hillbilly paradise, Marcus does not heed warnings to return back home and meets the highly dysfunctional Sweetzer family. The father is a religious tyrant, the brother is sitting on the thin line of insanity and Nell is as sweet as pumpkin pie...suspiciously sweet. Well as luck would have it, Marcus stumbles upon a bonafide case of possession. Throughout the movie, he has a hard time admitting this despite all the foreshadowing and not so subtle clues.
As far as scares go, this film is riddled with nail biting moments (as well as some pretty good humor). I'm talking about cold sweat, hair standing on end and edge of your seat fear that makes the girl 10 rows behind you scream to the top of her lungs (as well as a few curse words from several other people). You never really know what is coming up next or what you will see. It's one shock after another I can assure you. That's the excitement behind it all...there's an actual air of mystery to the plot. I'll just say that actress Ashley Bell, who brilliantly plays possessed Nell, provided most of the scares through her glaring stares and contortionist abilities (yes she really can bend into all of those positions...look it up).
The only drawback to this film is its ending. It starts off spooky with screaming in the woods and demonic chanting, but it pays off being pretty much absurd and frustrating. There was a definite ending this movie could have had, and it would have been absolutely wonderful...but they had to take it one more step further. It was a step that pretty much left everyone grumbling.
Two more things of importance...never trust a ginger, and there is no climbing on the ceiling as the trailer implies (consider me disappointed on that point).
3.5 Popcorn Kernels Out Of 5 (great suspense, excellent performance from Ashley Bell, weak ending)
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