Film Review: The Last Exorcism

The Last Exorcism. Rated MA 15+ (strong horror themes and violence). 87 minutes. Directed by Daniel Stamm. Screenplay by Huck Botko and Andrew Gurland.

It’s eleven years since the game-changing The Blair Witch Project (1999) – in which the filmmakers’ hand-held camera swooped about in a seemingly entirely random fashion. Blair Witch also set the precedent for ‘mockumentary’ cinematic storytelling – a story told through the experiences of people making a movie about their ill-fated trip into the haunted woods near Burkittesville, Maryland. Unscripted, improvised and featuring the famous video diary sequence from the terrified ‘camper’ Heather Donahue, Blair Witch also delivered an ending of such sickening and heart-stopping terror, that horror movie fans the world over rightly celebrated a new milestone in their beloved genre.

In 2008, Matt Reeves delivered his masterstroke Cloverfield, in which the science-fiction and horror genres were brilliantly welded to the hand-held camerawork. As a group of desperate young New Yorker’s find themselves in a cat-and-mouse game of survival with a marauding alien/monster invader and its offspring, Cloverfield’s compelling narrative was captured and provoked by the brilliant idea of having the video camera carried throughout the apocalyptic events by the archetypal nerdy best-friend ‘Hud’ (TJ Miller). Like Blair Witch, Cloverfield delivered an ending of utter hopelessness in the face of the might of a military hell-bent on annihilation of the monstrous enemy invader.

In 1973, director William Friedkin delivered the genre-defining The Exorcist. William Peter Blatty’s screenplay (adapted from his novel), provided Friedkin and his outstanding cast (including the late Jason Miller as Father Karras and Max von Sydow as the exorcist, Father Merrin) with the perfect showcase for a chilling and unforgettable story of the possession of the innocent Regan (Linda Blair) and the efforts of her increasingly desperate mother Chris (Ellen Burstyn). Still the most talked-about and revered movie of its kind, The Exorcist arguably owes a debt (in structure and tone, at least) to Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby (1968). Writer Ira Levin worked brilliantly on our primal fears (and increasing incomprehension) as the optimistic world of young Rosemary (Mia Farrow) was influenced by evil, supernatural forces seeking to control the destiny of her unborn child.

Watching any (or all) of the movies I’ve discussed in this review on DVD would be preferable to sitting through The Last Exorcism – the most unoriginal and derivative movie of the year, complete with the worst ending of any movie from this complex, fascinating and celebrated genre.

This review was commissioned by the Geraldton Newspaper Group.