Tragedy in The Last Exorcism

Hahaha, you thought I meant it was a tragic movie because a bunch of innocent people die and a demon is summoned from the belly of the underworld to walk amongst men? Screw that noise.

Here's the Thing.

And here's the thing. I have a huge soft spot for Biblical end of the world shit. Be it Diablo 2, The Exorcist, End of Days, whatever, there's something about a bloody pentagram on a wall that really sucks me in. Man, taken out of context that sentence doesn't sound too good, does it?

I went into The Last Exorcist not knowing anything about the movie, other than it was yet another handi-cam docu-horror in the style of The Blair Witch. So it's necessarily short and there are a good deal of shots that really don't contribute anything to the movie itself. Anyway, here's the spoilers, er, summary:

Ex-preacher wants to expose exorcism for the fraud that it is, so he goes to a backwoods farm where a dude has a "possessed" daughter. He shows the cameraman all of his neat tricks and gizmos that make the "exorcism" look "real." Afterward, daughter is still all messed up, the father goes berserk, and in the end, low and behold, she actually was possessed and gives birth to a demon.

Fact is that I was actually way into this movie until the last five minutes, where the entire thing didn't just jump the shark. This movie got on a white motorcycle with an American flag on the back and did some serious Evel Kenevel shit over a whole row of sharks. Twenty sharks! Maybe more! So let's look at the terrible last five minutes versus the actually good rest of the movie.

The hero is an ex-child preacher with a disabled son. When the child almost dies at birth, he realizes that doctors and modern medicine allowed him to live, and that doctors and modern medicine allow him to have a basically normal life. He has a crisis of faith and comes to realize he doesn't really believe in anything he's been preaching for essentially his entire life. So he decides to hire a film crew and make a movie about how to fake an exorcism.

Contrast a film that is full of honestly interesting characters with the dumb ass twist ending of the girl actually being possessed by a 100% real demon. If this movie were a date, I feel like I just got a bottle of wine broken over my head and now I'm soaking wet and stuck with the check.

The possessed girl herself is pregnant, and there is some dispute of who the father might be. It might be the obviously abusive father, the troubled brother, or a previously unknown boyfriend from town. This plot point, if played with any sense of realism, covers so much ground, hitting abusive parents with religious values, incest, rape, and teen pregnancy as it relates to religion all in one go. Hats off to the magnificent bastard who nailed that plot point.

But once again, real demon. So none of that bullshit about sexual abuse or backwards sexual teachings has any bearing anyway.

My point in saying all this is that, as a whole, The Last Exorcism is a pretty goddamn awful movie. But the real sadness in it is that, at every turn, there is true greatness poking its meager head through all of the cheap shocks. If the movie had played realistically, think Kramer Vs. Kramer with religion instead of child custody, this would be a serious nominee for top ten favorite movies. Not many popular films tackle the dark underbelly of religion in the backwoods, where most of the time, it resembles nothing more than fear mongering and child abuse. The Last Exorcism spends a ton of time building on these very points, then shits itself in half with a cheap gore scare at the end that, honestly, isn't that scary at all.

It was also not very shocking that I saw the name Eli Roth crop up during the credits. Now there's a horror story.