The Last Exorcism review

When going into The Last Excorcism, which played Monday night at the Toronto After Dark Film Festival, I wasn’t sure what to expect.  I had seen the trailers, and at first blush it seemed to be treading the same ground as other documentary style horror films, from Blair Witch to Paranormal Activity, and it was also tackling the exorcism sub-genre that The Exorcist still holds the crown after almost 40 years earlier still holds the crown for.  All this, combined with the name Eli Roth, made me wary.  Though not the director of this film, as producer his name is prominent in the advertising, and while I enjoyed Cabin Fever, I found both the Hostel movies more than a little lacking.

All those fears were quickly replaced by the fear that the film makers intended.

The basic premise of The Last Exorcism, directed by Daniel Stamm and written by Huck Botko and Andrew Gurland, is that of a documentary crew doing a piece on the life of Reverend Cotton Marcus, played by Patrick Fabian.  A Louisiana preacher of the fire and brimstone variety, Cotton proves that the delivery of the word is sometimes more important than the word itself, as he proves on camera when he delivers a fiery sermon on banana bread.  As part of his role as southern preacher, Cotton has performed hundreds of exorcisms, but as he`s matured is experiencing a crisis of faith.  He still does the fire and brimstone routine, but he`s lost his mojo.  With thousands of followers via his website, he still receives requests to perform exorcisms, but takes a much more secular approach, while giving his congregation the religious experience they seek.

With a documentary crew in tow, he picks a random exorcism request of the top of his pile and they proceed to record the journey, which takes them to the Sweetzer farm, to cast the demon of of farmer’s daughter Nell (Ashley Bell).  From there, the story is fraught with the kind of jump scares, and genuinely creepy moments that you would expect from a mash up of The Exorcist and The Blair Witch Project, with a few twists of its own thrown in for good measure.  What was unexpected is the amount of sympathy the script manages to evoke for each of the characters, the good Reverend in particular. Every major character in the story, from the Rev to the family seemingly beleaguered by a demon is well rounded, and although based on stereotypes, manages to break the mold in one way or another. As the final scenes unfold, there is genuine emotional attachment to their respective fates.  It seems that lately,most horror films have settled on cookie cutter characters, who’s personal arcs are pretty predictable from the first frame they appear onscreen.  In that sense, The Last Exorcism is a horror rarity with films like Let The Right One In and The House Of The Devil (and maybe in a more twisted vein, The Devil’s Rejects), that actually gives you people to care about.

The story is really the story of Cotton Marcus, and Patrick Fabian’s performance is top notch. It’s tough to say anything without giving away the story, but Cotton starts out being one step above a con man, and evolves to become a truly sympathetic character as he relates why his faith was challenged.  The performances of the Sweetzer family are all great as well, as the father (played by Louis Herthum) and brother (portrayed Caleb Landry Jones) appear to be largely the stereotypes we expect at the beginning, and become something more by the end.

Special note needs to be made of Ashley Bell’s performance as Nell Sweetzer, the apparently ‘possessed’ girl. In calmer scenes, she gets a chance to play a convincing childlike sixteen year old, and manages to switch over to raw evil in a heartbeat.  It’s the scenes where she’s ‘taken over’ that she gets to pull out all the stops.  The film makers decided to forego complex FX make-up and CGI, for these scenes, instead relying on lighting and Ashley Bell’s natural ability to contort her body in painful ways when the demon takes over.  Whether it took a lot of training to warp herself that way, or she’s naturally double jointed, it’s impressive.

Like the all natural approach taken with the Nell character’s ‘possession’ scenes, the gore is actually quite restrained compared to many contemporary horror films, especially those with Eli Roth’s name attached.  Despite this, there’s a single scene in the movie involving an animal which took me out of the film, and serves no real purpose beyond being downright sadistic.  I can see why it would be there, given the circumstances at that point in the film, but as someone with some intestinal fortitude, even I found it somewhat gratuitous, and frankly, out of place in the movie.

The other issues mainly have to do with the tropes of the ‘found footage’ sub-genre of horror film making:

• Who found the footage, and why are they presenting it?
• Couldn’t they have edited out the audio beeps and black frames?
• Why didn’t the cameraman just get the hell up outta Dodge?
• In what context are they editing the ‘found footage’, and why don’t they tell us what happened next?
• What’s with all the running in the forest at night?

It’s a tough narrative framework to get around.  Unlike a traditional film where the frame subconsciously disappears as you’re drawn into the story, the conceit of the faux documentary puts every little technical detail from lighting to film stock out as a storytelling element.  When it doesn’t come together ‘just so’, you run a much higher risk of taking the audience out of the film.  The Last Exorcism does suffer from these issues, but the script is tight enough that it was only for a moment here and there.

The pacing, which starts with a slow burn that ratchets up to a breakneck speed by the final act, is solid, and the film ends on a satisfying note.  Even with the momentarily falterings due to the faux documentary trappings, the well-drawn characters and solid performances not only save the movie, but manage elevate it beyond the genres it mashes up.  Cotton Marcus is one of the most interesting, engaging and, well, human, horror movie protagonists I’ve seen in a long time.

The Last Exorcism gets a wide release on August 27^th, 2010, and if you’re a horror fan sick of seeing only splatter flicks and classic horror remakes hitting the screens, you should find this a breath of fresh air.