The Last Exorcism (2010)

The Exorcist is probably my favorite movie of all time. It hits every single note and it hits it incredibly well. There is nothing as terrifying as Linda Blair's performance and the story behind the film is nearly as haunting as the film itself. No film, let alone a wide-release exorcism film, can compete with the storytelling and fear cast by the Exorcist. The Last Exorcism doesn't try and that's why it succeeds.

Failed televangelist and professional exorcist, Cotton Marcus, hires a two-person documentary team to follow him on his final exorcism in the backwoods of Louisiana, a town rife with rumors of cults and voodoo, to expose the exorcism racket. Once there, he performs his fraudulent exorcism and tries to leave, but finds himself caught in the story of this girl, one horrifically abused and tortured, not by demons but by the people she should be able to trust.

The Last Exorcism is, for the most part, a good film. It doesn't make use of its faux-documentary conceit as well as something like Blair Witch Project or [Rec], obviously, or even something more pedestrian like Lake Mungo, and the film drags a bit in the late-middle, with the male lead constantly in indecision. However, Ashley Bell's performance as Nell, the ostensibly possessed girl, is brilliant and she absolutely deserves every single award she won/was nominated for. The film staggers whenever the supernatural is introduced, especially at the end when the pacing is destroyed, but given that over ninety-percent of the film has nothing to do with the supernatural, its fine. It reminded me a lot of Kill List in that way. Definitely worth seeing, and definitely not the schlock that wide-release horror films usually are.