 | MOVIE DETAILS • Name: The Last Exorcism • Year: 2010 • Country: USA, France • Director: Daniel Stamm • Main cast: Patrick Fabian, Ashley Bell, Iris Bahr • Runtime: 87 minutes • Production company: Strike Entertainment, StudioCanal, Arcade Pictures • TRAILER |
Exorcism movies have their own enemy within themselves, almost like the demonical characters the depict. And since The Exorcist (1973) hit us in our lives and nightmares back then in a very far early 1970s, filmmakers have been trying to reprise that shocking effect over and over, with all sorts of luck. Mainly with not very interesting results, since rarelly exorcism movies bring new ideas to the play.
The Last Exorcism is a well directed, photographed and acted movie that tries to give a fresh turn to the same old story. Filmed like if it was live footage, a docummentary filming team follow an evangelical priest on his way to perform what is suposed to be his last exorcism. They travel to a rural farmhouse in Louisiana answering the desperate call of a father who fears her teenage daughter has been possessed by a demonical force.
Directed by Daniel Stamm and produced by Eli Roth, this film takes a very unoriginal start point and tries to give it a turn not so often seen in this kind of films. And the fact that the deal more or less works is because of a good atmosphere, good direction, and a very good work of the actors, specially the sceptical priest played by Patrick Fabian and the possessed little girl incarnated in Ashley Bell. The characters get develope along a first half of the movie that at times gets too boring. If you are an avid consumer of horror movies, like I am, you might think “oh, no, this old crap again”. But this time things are not what they seem.
Because, at the end, there is something way more dangerous than demons and mosters, and those are the fanatics. Specially the religious fanatics who can’t distinguish the difference between faith and madness. This film is made for the audience can take their own conclussions. It won’t work for everyone, not everybody will get completelly satisfied, but at least for me it was a decent exercise of a portrait of how crazy and wrong we humans can sometimes be.
Three years after this first The Last Exorcism installment, the not necessary sequel arrived. The Last Exorcism Part II (2013), although takes as a start point the facts happened in the original film, it totally doesn’t follow the phylosophy of this first one and delivers another demons-hunting-innocent-girl story with no interest. I guess I had to mention it.
RATE: 6/10
IMDB URL: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1320244
