The Last Exorcism - Review - F *Spoilers*

[David Hawk]

Director: Daniel Stamm
Writers: Huck Botko and Andrew Gurland

I appreciate that i am a little late with a review for this but i watched it this weekend and just felt compelled to write one up as i still can't quite believe what i saw.
The story concerns a preacher (Patrick Fabian, a TV veteran) who was raised to be a preacher by his preacher father. Anyway, he carries out exorcisms as he's growing up until one day he decides to expose other exorcists as the frauds he knows they are by working with a 'documentary' film crew to capture on tape him doing an 'exorcism.

As much as the documentary-style/found footage horror as flooded our screens in recent years, this does put it to good use and to be fair for around 75 minutes of its 87 minute running time it came across as a clever study of the 'reality' of the exorcism 'industry', people are/could just be mentally disturbed or abused and the money generated, then just when any decent editor would end the film, it turns into some cheesy cliche riddled Polanski rip off and undoes everything we have previously just seen.
It doesn't matter that what you see in the trailer and on the poster above doesn't actually appear in the film, its absence actually makes for a better more realistic story but it does matter that the filmmakers weren't confident in their material enough that they felt compelled to tack on a (unintentionally) hilarious Devil worshipping cult and and a glaringly obvious leader of said cult, which was so rushed it felt like they only had  certain amount of film stock left and had to use it.

I was trying to give co-producer Eli Roth a chance but his hideous lack of imagination is all over this and he is now quickly turning into the 'new' M. Knight because whenever i see his name attached to a film trailer now i will BOO and HISS at the screen as loudly as i possibly can.

[Sheridan Passell]

I've heard such conflicting things about this movie.

I'll never understand the full on Eli Roth hatred from everybody. Cabin Fever alone shows so much skill and intelligence as a director. He also seems like a nice guy to me, who genuinely knows and loves his craft.

[T.ROSS]

NO WAY!!!! This movie deserves a B if not an A. This film was brilliant, original, well thought out with new faces and wonderful acting! This movie took a different approach to an exorcism movie and it totally worked! One of the best films of 2010. Eli Roth is a great film maker. I agree with Sheridan. Watch it soon.

-T.ROSS

[David Hawk]

I agree on Cabin Fever wholeheartedly but it went down hill from there with Hostel and its sequel. I certainly don't hate on Roth, i just wished he'd fulfilled his promising start but unfortunately he seems to have gone down the Tarantino school of Directing, which is make a great first film then believe your own hype and take a steady spiral downwards.   

Like i said the first 75 minutes were spot on and would've made a great film but the last 10 minutes completely goes against everything the previous 75 did, its like two films were spliced together. It just turned so predictable with the whole devils cult and oh surprise surprise the cult leader is the town priest what a shock that's never been done before. Yawn.

[dalmatianjaws]

The first half of this flick is really quite awesome. The acting is superb and the character tension set-up is unique (innocent daughter with a demon, over protective religious father with a gun, faithless preacher poking his nose in ... all under the same roof) ... but OH MAN.

Starting with the Camera kidnapping and cat killing (prefaced with a characters saying, "well, we should probably all take a nap in a strange house.") the movie goes SO downhill. They start breaking the found footage  rules by adding soundtrack and double camera shots and the ending is SO SO stupid and unneeded.

Eli Roth has made one passable movie: Hostel.  Cabin Fever and Hostel 2 are brainless turds. Course, he didn't direct this, which explains why the first half is so good.