The last Exorcism

Cinema Verite is a style of film making that appears here to stay. It is the term for movies shot like a documentary but that are not documentaries. You know the style. The handheld, shaky cameras, the lack of too much score, weird focusing techniques, sometimes excruciating zooms in and out. Dialog that often sounds like it was made up on the spot and the use of mostly natural light. The idea is to put the audience directly into the action. In television it is being used for comic effect in The Office or Modern Family. But in film, it is almost always used for horror movies. Blair Witch Project, Cloverfield, Quarantine, Diary of the Dead and last year's runaway smash hit Paranormal Activity are all films that have used this style to varying degrees of success. Along comes the latest entry into the human possession sub-genre of horror. I follow Eli Roth on The Twitter and he has been plugging this thing like crazy and the buzz on it was actually pretty good, so I thought I would be worth checking out. Plus, when done well, I really enjoy Cinema Verite.

Cotton Marcus(Patrick Fabian) is a man who was born to be a preacher. He is the son of a preacher first of all, but he is also a man of infinite poise and charm. He knows how to work a room and he understands the "show" of it all. He is also a man who has performed countless exorcisms. The problem is, he does not believe in possession and he understands it is a scam. He was okay with it until he read an article where a kid was choked to death during an exorcism. Now, he wants to shine a light on the ugly fakery the church has perpetrated for financial game. So, he is going to do one last exorcism and let cameras film him so they can see how fake it really is. Marcus picks a letter at random and they set off to find a teeenage girl possessed by the demon Abalam. Cotton does a convincing, but fake exorcism and all appears to be well until Nell(Ashley Bell), the possessed teen, shows up at his hotel room that night. From there, all kinds of crazy shit starts to happen. Nell slaughters animals, speaks Latin, lashes out at the camera crew, puts her body is crazy positions and draws pictures she does not remember drawing. Cotton does not believe she is possessed, but traumatized by her pregnancy. She has been shamed into pretending to be possessed to lash out at a father who keeps her chained up, who may have raped her. Or maybe her brother did? Perhaps it was the local pastor?

It is really tough to figure out how I feel about this movie. It is unsettling for sure. It never really made me jump, but it did get me on edge quite a few times. I enjoyed how the movie played up the satirical opening 40 minutes by splicing the exorcism footage with footage of Cotton showing how he makes the magic. Fabian is a very charismatic actor and he does a great job in the opening when we see Cotton preaching and there is a great bit involving banana bread that gets great laughs. When the movie switches from kind of comic into this weird is-she-or-isn't-she possessed movie, it loses a little bit of steam, but it still kept my interest because of intensity of the story and the great, intimidating score. The performances work better during this section of the film, but the Cinema Verite starts to lose steam a bit. The film is too dark, and we lose too much with the camera man running and I get that is the idea, but it just started to bother me.

Of course, the big thing with this movie is the ending. And it is not just the final scene, it is roughly the final 10 or 15 minutes. When Cotton confronts the girl and she asks if he wants a "blowing job" instead of a "blow job" he assumes she is not possessed and she spins a story. Movie ends, or does it? Cotton, for some weird reason checks out the story, it is not true. Cotton and film crew go back and then shit just gets weird. I am all for weird, random and rushed endings, when they seem to have a reason. I do not need everything in a movie spelled out for me, nor do I need to have a firm grasp on the ending. Plenty of great stories have indeterminate endings and that is wonderful. I like to feel like the stories are not finished. However, when a movie throws a bunch of seemingly unconnected shit at you in the span of a few minutes just for the fuck of it, I lose interest. It is possible to piece these incongruous images together to form some sort of ending narrative. People have been explaining it all weekend The Interwebs. But the movie works so hard to be small and intimate that ending just blows that all to shit. And in a way it ruins the entire movie going experience.

The Last exorcism builds up a lot of good will and I can tell that people will have different opinions on the end and when a movie sparks conversation/debate I consider that to be a great thing, but this just rubbed me the wrong way towards the end. Along with the usual problems of Cinema Verite, which involves there being a point where the person with the camera would just drop the camera and run for the hills. But that is one of those things you just have to accept in movies. I liked the idea and most of the execution of the film, so it is enough to recommend, but that ending will really determine what you think of the film as a whole.

Final Grade: C