Overview: Cotton Marcus is a Catholic priest who doubts his faith (wow, the original story line is giving me butterflies already), and he despises the Exorcism ritual. In order to bring the dark truth about exorcisms out in the open, he decides to film one, and then release it to the world as a documentary. Well as it turns out this possessed girl actually has something wrong with her, and no it’s not boy related.
The Good: No Horror movie is complete without a few idiots thrown into the mix. It makes me squeal like a little-school-girl-on-a-Friday-afternoon whenever someone does something completely ridiculous, and ends up paying for it later. You want to yell, “Don’t go in to that pitch-black basement, you single-white-and-perfectly-curved-female-with-a-large-wad-of-cash-in-both-pockets!!” Patrick Fabian is amazing as the doubting preacher, and you forget that he ever stared on “Saved by the Bell: College Years”. Casting Ashley Bell as the possessed girl has to be the single greatest idea in the history of Horror, because in real life she is double jointed all over the body, so when those intense Exorcism moments happen, Ashley is able to pull off some of the freakiest moves ever, and I’m not talking about the type of moves you’d see on “Saturday Night Fever.” The last good thing I wanted to mention is that “The Last Exorcism” is the perfect example on how home-video-styled Horror movies should be made, because as opposed to “The Blair Witch”, or “Paranormal Activity”, this one actually succeeds in being creepy.
The Bad: I’m not sure how long the movie is, but I am sure it isn’t long enough! The movie takes a little bit to get going in the beginning, because you have to sit through the “Why I hate my job as a preacher” story, and then once you get used to a ton of scary stuff happening, the movie ends!! The greatest flaw with this movie was due to the absence of everyone else in the “Saved By The Bell” cast!! It is my dream that one day a priest will perform an exorcism on Zack and Screech, only to find out the devil was in Zack and Screech was just being himself.
The Ugly: This is a great one to see with friends, because the whole time you’ll either be scared or laughing at the stupidity of everyone on screen. It seems that Exorcism movies are being done to death, and Hollywood has even started making the ones “Based” on true stories. “The Last Exorcism”, although may not be true, is far more original than many of its other movie-brethren.
P.S. if you ever find yourself surrounded in a hickish area with alligators running around, dead cows, and little red-head kids that are unnaturally calm, then the chances are you’re in Hell.
4 out o 5
