The Last Exorcism is another in the found footage style of movie and it is a fairly natural fit in that all one needs is a teenaged girl who is slightly limber and can speak gibberish. And as a fella who frequents AOL chat rooms, has a sixer of Zima on ice and hasn’t be caught by Chris Hansen yet I can concur...um, forget I said anything.
Our movie opens with a shady preacher who is being followed around by a documentary crew. We’ll just call them Deadmeat and Ms. Deadmeat. Our shady preacher has a Marjoe Gortner sort of back story in that he was once a kid preacher and is now an adult preacher who just happens to perform fake exorcisms for gullible people. Gortner, as an adult, went another route and appeared in movies featuring an international cast. The preacher appears to be Baptist which is kinda weird. I always assumed that exorcisms were the métier of Catholic priests who enjoy smoking, drinking, boxing and giving smoldering looks at Ellen Burstyns. Live and learn, I guess. Well, the right reverend Cotton decides that he will do one last exorcism for the documentarians and chooses a letter at random and we’re off to New Orleans.
Our possessed teen, her dad and brother live at the end of one of those horror movie dirt roads. Our preacher man interviews the girl and just exorcises the shit out of her. At one point he commands the demon to enter into him and he does a cartoonish bit of shaking. That’ll be several hundred dollars my good man. Back at the motel the possessed girl shows up and starts trying to make out with Ms. Deadmeat. So, they do what must be done and take her to the local hospital for evaluation. She turns out to be pregnant! Not from licking the sound lady, mind you. I’ll assume a penis was the culprit. But, whose? Ms. Deadmeat automatically assumes that it must be the dad ‘cause he homeschools her and lives on a dirt road and everyone knows what that means. The girl lays the blame on some kid who works at a diner.
*Spoilers*
Well, we get faux creepy possessed girl in a PG13 found footage movie nonsense and then the movie just falls apart. I guess the dad sent the letter, maybe. He’s tied up and blind folded at the ritual thing at the end. Which could be part of the ritual or it could be that the cultists are trying to keep him out of the way. If it is the second option, why not just kill him? I’m going to assume it was part of the ritual. So why send for an exorcist in the first place. If he can do the job then all their planning to bring a demon into the world comes to an end. Unless the cultists plan on having him and the film crew at the ritual, but that requires that the preacher stop by that diner to talk to the kid who the girl says is the father of the baby. What if he isn’t working that day? So, fine the dad sent the letter to thwart the plans of the cultists. I guess he didn’t think of just taking her to Planned Parenthood for a quick abortion.
If the movie was about a fake exorcist who is presented with a genuine possession and has it reaffirm his faith it might have been interesting. The movie does do this in a slight superficial way. Of course, the audience for this sort of thing has no interest in character growth or meaningful interaction between people. They just want something they can text through and occasionally glance up at the screen for the creepy stuff.
Christ this movie is stupid. Don’t watch it.
No comments:
Post a Comment