THE LAST EXORCISM — ★ — Patrick Fabian, Ashley Bell, Louis Herthum; rated PG-13 (violence, gore, profanity, vulgarity); in general release
The makers of "The Last Exorcism" clearly believe that today's audiences haven't seen either "The Exorcist" (1973) or "Rosemary's Baby" (1968).
That's a fair enough assumption. But assuming that they haven't seen either "The Blair Witch Project" (1999) or last year's "Paranormal Activity"? That's just plain stupid.
And speaking of stupid, an ill-considered, laughably dumb coda sequence only compounds "Exorcism's" numerous problems. This is already a film that borrows too heavily from the aforementioned movies.
But the silly ending ensures that the whole thing isn't even remotely scary or convincing. The awful "Blair Witch," "Exorcist" and "Rosemary's Baby" follow-ups have nothing on this dud.
Patrick Fabian (HBO's "True Blood") stars as Cotton Marcus, a once-famous "child preacher" who has lost his faith.
Still, Cotton continues to preach and to perform rites, including exorcisms.
With a documentary film crew in tow, he heads to a small Louisiana farm owned by widower Louis Sweetzer (Louis Herthum).
Louis' livestock has been dying mysteriously, and he believes these killings may have been the work of his normally sweet teenage daughter, Nell (Ashley Bell, from Showtime's "The United States of Tara").
Aside from the nonsensical ending, the plotting is predictable. And the movie starts off almost as a "mock-umentary," with numerous, obvious swipes at televangelists and fundamentalist Christians.
None of these supposed observations are even remotely funny, they're just mean-spirited and smug.
Also, these are some of the most irritating, unlikable characters in recent memory. Aside from Bell's wide-eyed innocent, you'll be rooting for this bunch to get killed, or at least get their much-deserved comeuppance.
"The Last Exorcism" is rated PG-13 and features strong, disturbing horror violence (content and imagery, including knife play, stabbings and slashings, gunplay, fiery mayhem, demonic possessions, violence against animals and violence against women), gory and bloody imagery, scattered strong profanity, crude sexual language (slang and other references), and derogatory language and slurs. Running time: 87 minutes.
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