What The Hell?!

That was my reaction after this movie ended. 80 minutes of good will that the movie earned was lost with the 5-minute schlocky ending.

The Last Exorcism follows Rev. Cotton Marcus, a minister who has come to believe that demonic possession is hokum and that the exorcisms he performs are more a trick for the mind than the actual saving of a soul.
Rev. Marcus and a documentary crew head out to Louisiana to perform one last exorcism - that of a teenage girl, Nell Sweetzer whose father believes she is possessed and has been killing the farm animals.

Daniel Stamm is actually to be commended for delivering a subtle horror film (I know, it seems like an oxymoron). The Last Exorcism is more unsettling than scary, more eerie than gory. So if you went in expecting scares and gore then you would definitely be disappointed.

But this movie hangs on the characters of Cotton Marcus and Nell Sweetzer. The actors' performances are spot on - Marcus is a likable charlatan and Nell plays innocence and troubled so well you start to wonder whether she really is possessed or mentally unstable.

Had The Last Exorcism ended 5 minutes earlier I would have been happy to give this movie a solid 7/10 with a hearty recommendation to go watch it. But the ending was just so bad, so trite, so tacked on that it destroyed my enjoyment of it. I get pissed off just thinking about it.

If you do decide to watch this movie. Please stop the film as Marcus and film crew return to the house. You'll thank me for it

4/10