The Last Exorcism

In many respects, an anti-climatic film is much worse than a purely poor one. With a shit film you know it isn’t going to get any better. With an anti-climatic one, you end up expecting great things, only to be bitterly disappointed by the denouement. And that’s precisely what happens with The Last Exorcism.

It stars, as so many found footage movies do, with a bit of scene-setting. The protagonist – whose name escapes me despite only having seen the film less than 24 hours ago – is a priest who has done a lot of fake exorcisms. He is making a documentary to show how he fakes them, since he has lost his faith and wants to warn others about the dangers of exorcisms. So he duly selects one supposed victim of possession, and goes off to make his film.

From that point, the film does a great deal of good work slowly building up the tension. It refuses to commit to whether the possessed girl is actually harbouring a demon or having a psychotic breakdown. Furthermore, it hints at incest and parental abuse, further muddying the waters about the cause of this possession. Despite his best efforts, the ersatz exorcist finds himself caught up in the mystery.

Sure, it isn’t flawless – it certainly falls foul of the “why don’t you just call the police?” objection, particularly after the face-cutting/pregnancy revelation. Furthermore, the cat killing scene doesn’t work, and the way it is realised comes across as pretty amateurish. But the film has a carefully crafted ambiguity to it, and a strong central performance for the actor playing the “possessed” girl. It holds your interest – which is no mean feat for a modern horror movie.

Until the end, when it takes all that has been good about this film and spunks it away with an ending that combines The Blair Witch Project, The Wicker Man and Cannibal Holocaust without capturing any of the magic of any of those film endings. Seriously, it is like they just gave up. And as a result, it renders the whole film a spectacular waste of time. Unless, of course, you don’t watch, say, the final 10 minutes of the film.

And actually that’s probably my advice to anyone wanting to watch this film – if you do so, turn off after about one hour fifteen minutes and write your own ending. Seriously, it can’t be any worse than the ones the film-makers came up with...