The Last Exorcism

What is it with films about demonic possession and girls in white nighties with long, greasy hair? The Exorcist, The Exorcism of Emily Rose and now Daniel Stamm's The Last Exorcism each depict this once striking, now tame imagery, undeniably copying visuals from William Friedkin's seminal 1973 hit about 12-year-old Linda Blair being possessed by the devil. Ringu and Ju-On: The Grudge also deserve a mention, containing black-haired, young female ghosts roaming around in colourless nightgowns.

It's become a cliché of horror, so much so that its symbolic nature and the juxtaposition of child-like innocence plagued with inner evil has lost its eerie effect, weakening over time with monotonous overuse. And while Stamm's new horror has an ominous atmosphere, it struggles to exorcise the feeling of familiarity out of its body.

What it does bring to the exorcism sub-genre's bedside, however, is the increasingly popular device of the found-footage format, i.e., the whole movie is shot on a camcorder by the characters within the film, a la The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity. It may be gimmicky, but the mockumentary style lunges the possession genre into foreign territory and makes for an interesting - if grainy -watch.

The Last Exorcism follows Cotton Marcus (Patrick Fabian), an easy-going, confident and charming reverend who is called to a farm in Louisiana by Louis Sweetzer (Louis Herthum), the over-protective father of isolated 16-year-old Nell (Ashley Bell), who he believes is possessed by a demon.

With the aid of documentarian Iris Reisan (Iris Bahr) and cameraman Daniel Moskowitz (Adam Grimes), Cotton is going to make a documentary (the one we're watching) intended to disprove exorcisms and show how easily they can be faked by priests with the use of props and hidden speakers.

Cotton has been doing this for years and believes that those allegedly possessed by supernatural entities are actually just suffering severe trauma, so he provides a service of fake exorcisms - their artificiality unbeknownst to the receiver - to remove their delusions. A placebo effect, if you will. However, after analysing Nell's predicament and watching her every move, he begins to question whether or not her condition is real or psychological, fearing that a demonic force is in fact controlling her from inside.

You'd think that a film with a premise such as this would take advantage of the opportunity to portray creative scares, but The Last Exorcism annoyingly settles for seen-it-all-before tactics. Sure, Nell shouts and screams, contorts her limbs like a circus freak and stares longingly into nothing but thin air, but there's not much that seems new or fresh. Even the segment in the trailer where she walks across the ceiling is missing from the film. Oh, come on!

The film just is not scary, failing to hook the viewer's nerves and make them quiver in fear at the thought of the perverse invasion of Nell's young soul. The main problem is that despite the film’s hardest efforts, everything feels orchestrated and fake, much like Cotton's so-called exorcisms, never crafting the sense of realism that The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity successfully achieved.

Saying that, it is not without its tension, with our blindness as to whether or not this adolescent's body has been taken over by a rebel from Hell leading to much suspense. Stamm heavily sprinkles the film with holy ambiguity up until the ending (which in itself is a little ambiguous too), keeping the film on a fairly absorbing and intriguing level.

Our lead, Fabian, is a fine actor with strong charisma, and the character he's playing is a fascinating one. He's a man who doesn't practice what he so lively preaches. He lies to people for money, yet he justifies it by saying that he has a family to feed. He is a con-man, but a well-meaning one, and he is only trying to help the people he "exorcises”, as shown with his determination to help Nell.

Ashley Bell is enchanting as Little Miss Demon, convincing in both the roles of a secluded but kind, religious teenage girl with a cheery disposition; and a malevolent, sneering, kitten-murdering monster. Impressive. She's a sympathetic character who Cotton suspects is hiding a secret, maintaining the film's aura of unease.

Herthum is splendidly hateable as Nell's alcoholic father who "protects" her from the rest of the world and isn't afraid to take the situation into his own hands. Pssst, he means shooting her in the face with a shotgun. 20-year-old Caleb Landry Jones shows quite a bit of talent as Nell's non-religious brother, an odd character who's immediately onto Cotton's tricks and threatens to hurt him if anything happens to his sister.

The Last Exorcism is more character-driven than you'd think, with no scares - or attempts at scares - for the first 40 minutes. The primary focus is on Cotton's scepticism and his rethinking of his faith as he watches Nell go bloody cuckoo, and for that it works. Mostly.

While it desperately needs more horrifying moments and a bigger imagination, The Last Exorcism is an entertaining addition to the found-footage genre. Do not expect a jump-a-minute horror film as you'll probably leave rather disappointed. Just sit back, shut up and masturbate with a crucifix. Wait, no, wrong movie.

7/10