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If you believe in God, you have to believe in the Devil.”  Or so said the reverend Cotton Marcus in Eli Roth’s new movie, The Last Exorcism.  That’s even the tagline on some of the move posters.  Actually, I think he’s got it wrong.  It should be the other way around: “if you believe in the Devil, then you must believe in God.”  And this is the point the movie ends up making.

What should we make of the movie poster with a crucifix and the words, “Believe in Him” above it?  The girl in the poster is bowing in submission, though contorted into a grotesque version of a believer paying devotion before the symbol of the Lord.  Pictures mean things.  And I’m still wondering what this one means.

Cotton Marcus is the magnetic pastor of a pentecostal-ish congregation in the deep South.  He started preaching in his dad’s church when he was 8 years old.  He’s a born performer.  Doing exorcisms has been a family ministry, passed from father to son, for generations.  However, during a family crisis, Cotton discovers that his faith is lost.  He continued the charade of his ministry, even the exorcisms, because. . . well, it’s a living.  And besides, he figured he was basically helping people.  Things change again when he learns of an episode where a child is accidentally killed during an exorcism.  This is his turning point.  Cotton decides to blow his own cover by performing one last exorcism with a documentary film crew recording his spiritual warfare sleight of hand.  The minister randomly chooses one of the frequent letters he receives from troubled souls requesting his services and off they go.

They arrive at the Sweetzer farm in poor rural Louisiana where they meet Nell, an angelically innocent girl whose father is convinced she is inhabited by the Devil.  Cotton employs his usual tricks, allowing the camera see how he does things behind the scenes.  Things get interesting when the counterfeit demon slayer comes up against something real.

To say more about the plot would be to give too much away.  The central question is whether the devil is real and, if so, what implications should this have on one’s belief in God.

When I heard that Eli Roth was producing The Last Exorcism, I expected more than I got, which is not necessarily a bad thing.  Actually, I appreciate the comparative restraint this movie exercises.  Too many occult themed movies feel the need to top the last in terms of shock and awe, leading many into the realm of the absurd.  A general rule of thumb for storytellers is to show, not to tell.  But one can show too much.  Equally important to restraint and good editing is timing.  If you must show, then do so at the exact best time to have the greatest impact.

Many people I’ve talked to say they disliked the ending.  The director definitely took a risk.  In my opinion, the ending is not entirely satisfying, but it wasn’t  a total miss.  I needed just a little bit more.  The film is good, not great.  It takes the increasingly popular found footage approach, which still works for me.

Take a little bit Rosemary’s Baby, a little bit The Exorcist, a little bit Blair Witch Project and more than a smidge of The Exorcism of Emily Rose.  Stir them on a low heat and you get this new film.  The Last Exorcism is not nearly as good as any of the above mentioned projects, but is still probably better than most occult-themed films.

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“Zero. . . I tend almost never to throw other films under the bus, but that is exactly an example of what we should not be doing in 3-D. Because it just cheapens the medium and reminds you of the bad 3-D horror films from the 70s and 80s, like Friday the 13th 3-D. When movies got to the bottom of the barrel of their creativity and at the last gasp of their financial lifespan, they did a 3-D version to get the last few drops of blood out of the turnip.”

Listen to our recent Body Count podcast on the rise of 3-D movies and how it affects the horror genre.
Read hallo’s review of Friday the 13th 3-D here.

The Last Exorcism is directed by Daniel Stamm produced be Eli Roth and stars Patrick Fabian and Ashley Bell.   It is the story of a disillusioned preacher who has decided to do a documentary showing how exorcisms can be faked.   The movie begins with Reverend Cotton Marcus being filmed for a documentary exposing exorcism hoaxes. Cotton has done over a hundred exorcisms and has decided to prove that they are a hoax after reading about a boy that was killed during an exorcism. Patrick has gathered a film crew for one last exorcism to expose how he fools people into believing he has exorcised a demon.

Cotton randomly picks a letter he has received about a girl who is possessed named Nell Sweetzer. Patrick and the crew go to the Sweetzer rural farmhouse where the sixteen year old lives with her older brother and father. Once they arrive Cotton realizes that Nell has problems. Having lost her mother to cancer she seems to be suffering psychological issues and is killing the family livestock, though she has no memory of these acts.   Cotton does a fake exorcism and then tells the family she is fine and leaves to go to a hotel for the night. Nell shows up at Cotton’s hotel room that evening in a catatonic state. Cotton and the film crew take Nell to the hospital and then back home. The next day Nell attacks her brother Caleb which prompts the return of Reverend Cotton and the film crew.

The remainder of the movie takes place with Cotton and the film crew trying to talk Nell’s father in to the fact his daughter needs counseling and her father convinced she is possessed by a demon.  While this debate is going on Nell is spiraling out of control with devastating results.

I was incredibly excited to see this movie and the first 80 minutes of it did not let me down. From the opening scene with Cotton I liked him. He was a fraud but I took to him and he made me laugh. He does seem to care about people and this is why he is out to expose exorcisms as hoaxes. He has lost his faith but through out the whole movie I was cheering for him and hoping he regained it.

I thought the cinematography was engrossing and felt like a documentary. I felt like I was watching something on the Discovery channel. The camera did an amazing job of searching out the rooms and catching a glimpse of what was going on beyond the camera lens. I would hear noises and was afraid what the camera was going to find, and there were really no cheap shocks in the entire movie. I also thought the movie built at a very good pace. I felt engrossed with the characters and I was involved with the plot. The movie kept building and building at a steady pace to the climax. That is where the movie takes a turn for the worse. The last 10 minutes of the film disgusted me as all this incredible build up was destroyed in one cheesy conclusion. I say that because I loved the film up to that point and was very involved, then they tied up the story line in 10 minutes and it was uninspired.

The movie was ruined for me with the ending but it is worth a see because Patrick Fabian and Ashley Bell do an outstanding job and the cinematography helps to propel the storyline.

So start commenting.  And Good Luck!

One of the main characters of Piranha 3D is a soft-core porn producer named Derrick Jones (played perfectly by Jerry O’Connell) . The character is clearly based on Girl’s Gone Wild founder Joe Francis, an undeniable sleezeball who finds little support in any corner of society not littered with frat boys or drunken college girls, so it is no surprise to see the film take a number of well-placed shots at his broad target. Unfortunately, the Jones character seems to exist not as a vehicle for parody but simply as a way to justify a boatload (actually, many boatloads) of gratuitous nudity. Still, aside from one over-the-top bit of soft-core ogling, the T&A is pretty standard and accurately reflects what goes on during Spring Break in various sunny destinations. More importantly, the scares and gore that are the real attraction for most horror fans are here in full force.

Piranha 3D is less a remake of the original cult classic as it is another riff on the theme. The film removes the military angle and the local politics and basically avoids wasting screen time on anything that isn’t naked or being eaten. It’s a purity that I appreciate. The opening scene, in which Jaws alum Richard Dreyfuss becomes the first victim of prehistoric piranha released into the lake by an earthquake that has opened up a connection with a large underground lake, is a stunner. It starts the film off right while also getting about 50% of the exposition out of the way quickly.

We get the rest of the exposition in the next few scenes where we meet the local sheriff (played by the extremely likable Elizabeth Shue), her teen son and his younger siblings, and the aforementioned Derrick Jones, his cameraman, and two bathing beauties. When the son takes a job scouting locations for the film crew, he leaves his younger siblings to fend for themselves (which doesn’t go well). Add a romantic subplot between the son and a high school friend that Jones is trying to talk out of her bikini, mix in a school of angry, battle-scarred piranha, shake well, and you have a recipe for a killer monster movie done right.

And, for the most part, it is.  The main set pieces (the collapse of a floating stage, a boat-to-boat rope climb) are done very well.  All the characters we want to die violently do so.  Those that need a heroic send off, get one.  The 3D is used to good effect throughout though it still feels like a gimmick instead of being fully integrated into the cinematography.  The blood and guts level is super high and some of the deaths are just awesome.  Jones especially gets a graphic send off that seems to be exactly what he deserves, and it sent the audience I saw it with into fits of laughter.

For fans of the genre, Piranha 3D is a lot of fun.  It isn’t for everyone—an eight minute long nude synchronized swimming scene involving two of the “wild girls” is ridiculously graphic and unnecessary–but the film is good fun for gore hounds who can handle a bit of gratuitous T&A with their horror.