Film Review: The Last Exorcism

Story by Andrew Johnson | August 30, 2010 | Tags: Film

Review by Andrew Johnson

Handicam mockumentary-style media is so in right now.

Ever since The Blair Witch Project made a few gazillion dollars at the box-office, there’s been a growing tendency in Hollywood to try and capitalize on the illusion of “reality.”  Acknowledge that cameras are present, and you’ve essentially broken down the fourth wall between viewer and the screen.  In the past decade alone we’ve seen this spread into so many television shows (The Office, Modern Family) and feature films (Borat, Cloverfield, Quarantine) that it almost doesn’t work anymore.  After all, why keep trying to pretend you’re not pretending when so many other properties have already worn out the gimmick?  The Last Exorcism is the latest horror film that attempts to use the faux-documentary approach to increase the tension.  The good news is that it succeeds more often than it fails.

The plot follows a disillusioned evangelical pastor, Cotton Marcus (Patrick Fabian), who after reading about an exorcism gone wrong that resulted in the death of a young boy decides to reveal the truth behind such medieval practices.  As someone who’s performed dozens of exorcisms himself, he receives numerous pleas for help in the mail from people all over the country who are convinced one of their loved ones might be possessed by a demon.  He picks a letter at random and brings a film crew with him to Louisiana in order to document the real (read: fake) methods behind his exorcisms – tape recordings, smoking crosses, and other devices he will use to convince a client that he’s actually expelled a demon.  Of course, once when he arrives at the home of Louis Sweetzer and his daughter Nell, it isn’t long before things start to get really, really weird.  Cue extreme body contortions and creepy silhouette shots.

It’s important when dealing with such mockumentary setups that everything come across as plausible, and this depends largely on the performances.  The Last Exorcism has this down pat.  Patrick Fabian comes across as so naturally smarmy and manipulative that at times I found myself forgetting I was watching an actor.  Even more noteworthy is the relatively unknown Ashley Bell as Nell, who strikes the perfect chord of sheltered naivety with undercurrents of the demonic.  This may very well be her breakout role.

It’s a good thing the actors are so convincing, because they carry the first half of the film on their shoulders.  The surprising thing about The Last Exorcism is that despite what the marketing might have you believe, it’s a slow burn that doesn’t really start to ratchet up the tension for a solid half hour. Instead of leaping straight into jump scares and the usual handicam horror tropes, director Daniel Stamm chooses to engage the audience by fleshing out his protagonist and the different themes related to religion and the lower-class.  Cotton may be arrogant and a bit manipulative, but his heart seems to be in the right place considering his upbringing.  As he sees things, while his preaching and exorcisms might be rooted in doubt and fraud, the people who believe it are better for it.  And while the film begins with a seemingly staunch anti-religion stance by examining his hypocrisy, the audience is encouraged to identify with the Sweetzers, a family that has latched on to fundamentalist Christianity as a means of coping with loss.  Yes, Nell is an extremely sheltered girl, but this has only made her all the more innocent and compassionate.  Her father has a drinking problem and her brother is distrustful of outsiders, but their love for her and their desire to see her cured from whatever is afflicting her is readily apparent.  What could have easily turned into a parade of familiar stereotypes – a Southern family of religious bigots who ironically turns out to be hiding something monstrous – is set aside in favor of a more complex and balanced look at cultural attitudes and movements.

The film gradually unveils new information about the Sweetzers and their situation, but until the last scene it never commits to a specific answer about what’s really happening.  All of the characters (and the audience) assume certain things about each other based on their preconceived notions of religion, skepticism, and cultural stereotypes, but the vast majority of these pseudo-explanations are revealed to be just that – empty assumptions without concrete evidence to support them.  Stamm takes his low budget of $2 million and puts it to good use, favoring practical effects over CGI, and the result is an unsettling atmosphere of uncertainty.  Nell may frequently go into trances and engage in some pretty strange behavior, but don’t expect anything remotely on par with the head-spinning scene of The Exorcist.  All of the events portrayed can easily be achieved by a normal human being without the aid of something supernatural. This makes the conflict between faith and skepticism even more confounding – is Nell really possessed by the devil, or is she just mentally unstable due to natural causes?

Unfortunately, while the script is very well-written and performed, a mishandling of the mockumentary approach keeps The Last Exorcist from reaching its full potential.  One of the main obstacles handicam horror films always have to deal with is how to account for the presence of a camera. Whether it’s the “party-film-turned-crisis-documentary” approach of Cloverfield or the “news story” angle of Quarantine, there must always be an explanation for why somebody decided to film traumatic events instead of doing the sane thing and running away.  Furthermore, the audience also needs to be clued in as to whether or not they’re watching raw “found footage” or if the film they’re seeing is in fact an edited cut using such footage.  If we are to truly suspend our disbelief enough to accept the world of the film and the conceit that oh my god this might actually have happened, we have to be aware of the rules going in.

This is where The Last Exorcism ultimately falls apart.  Though it succeeds at presenting some rather suspenseful moments, it never quite establishes its own rules well enough for it to be believable.  We’re led to think that there is a single-camera documentary crew following around Cotton, consisting of solely fictional director Irish Riesen and a cameraman.  No mention is made of editing any sort of finished product, either by Iris or by those that implicitly found the footage and decided to release it into theaters.  As a result, certain scenes, particularly in the second half, feel extremely staged.  If there’s only a single camera running, why are so there many cuts during the most dramatic moments?  Who was doing the editing, and using what other footage?  And what’s up with the added musical score?  By the time we get to the film’s final moments, things have gotten so ridiculous and obviously modified by a third-party that it’s impossible to feel genuinely scared by anything.  The ruse is broken.  We can’t buy into the illusion of realism if the illusion isn’t coherently maintained.

For most of its 87-minute runtime, The Last Exorcism is a surprisingly good film, managing to combine a decent amount of scares with complex characters and themes.  Unfortunately, the last five minutes nearly sour everything that came before them.  Future handicam horror films take note: it’s not enough to master the suspense if you can’t also master the gimmick.  And please, have a finale that’s actually scary.

Andrew Johnson is the host of MovieChatter, a weekly film discussion podcast.  He also occasionally blogs about film at The Kuleshov Effect.  Of all the opinions out there about the current state of cinema, he swears that his are the right ones.