The Last Exorcism is the latest film to use the storytelling technique that is becoming commonplace in the horror movie genre- "found footage." In the past few years alone we have seen Rec, Quarantine, Cloverfield, and last year's smash Paranormal Activity. The concept of these films is that something is being filmed and when stuff starts to go down no one decides to just drop the camera and run. The film continues to roll and the audience is left with the question at the end of- who the hell edited this thing together? This film, for the most part, stays in an area where it makes sense that they would keep filming what they see, but there are a few wonky parts where the internal logic breaks down. However, this film is so much more than that so it's unfair for anyone to dock it for that minor gripe.
Rev. Cotton Marcus (Patrick Fabian- Saved by the Bell:The New Class) plays a man who is almost a life-long preacher. Ever since the age of 10 he has been a man of the cloth and readily admits that what seemed like a gimmick then has now become a man who clearly knows he is bamboozling people. See Cotton is having some trouble with his faith. He tells the person filming him that he could tell the people in the congregation anything in a fevered manner and they would fall for it hook, line, and sinker. He proves this by inserting his mom's recipe for banana bread into a sermon in a pretty funny scene. The most troubling aspect of his faith however is that he is having a crisis of it at the moment. His wife and him have a kid who struggled at birth and when they found out the son would be okay his first thought was, "Thank the doctor." That initial thought troubles him. His biggest problem though is with the aspect of exorcism and how the church chooses to treat it. Cotton explains that, "If your a Christian you have to believe in the Devil. Jesus himself was an exorcist and cast out demons. So if you believe in God, you have to believe in the devil." Admittedly, that is a pretty sound theological argument. What troubles Cotton though is that so many men of the cloth are quick to perform exorcisms, he alone has been performing them since the age of ten. Recently he has been reading stories about people who have died during exorcism rituals. One particular story involves a 12 year old autistic boy who was suffocated to death while people tried to "help" him. This leads Cotton's conscience to eat at him. He's been taking people's money for years doing these exorcisms and he knows that in the end a demon is cast not because of the presence of a God but rather because of some psychosomatic belief. Cotton comes up with the idea to perform his "last exorcism," and expose that it is all fake. In his mind, he can clean his conscience this way. So he hires a film crew to follow him around and picks a random letter off the heap asking for help.
The letter Cotton reads is from farmer Louis Sweetzer who lives in the backwoods of Louisana. He believes that his daughter Nell is possessed and in this state she is killing Louis' livestock and ruining the lives of the dad, her brother Caleb, and her own. Cotton, with a smarmy contempt, heads to help and thinks he is going to prove that exorcisms are a hokey ritual that means nothing. Cotton performs an exorcism on the girl full of the normal tricks he would employ which include an iPod full of sounds, fishing wire, and electronic impulses. He collects his money from Louis and heads back up the road with his camera crew to a local hotel. That night he wakes up and Nell is in his room and Cotton is thrust back to the Sweetzer farm and full of far more self-doubt than he had the first time around there. It's hard to explain the movie from there without devolving into spoilers so I'll try to tread carefully from here on out.
Fabian is perfect in his role of the reverend. He carries his character with the same used-car salesman charm employed by any number of televangelists. Part of him carries contempt for the congregation where he preaches, but on the other hand he recognizes that the comfort he brings them is a valuable thing. Additionally, since Cotton is essentially "coming clean" you root for him from the beginning. If the film was Cotton making fun of his clients you would be rooting for him to get his from frame 1. Cotton is a tough character to play because so much of how the audience views the film is played through him. We all enter our viewing of the film through the prism of our own preconceptions regarding religion. If you view it with a skeptical eye you'll identify with one half of Cotton's personality. If you believe in the Bible and all its teachings you will clearly identify with the other half. The beauty of the script is that for the first third of the movie you are invested because regardless of your thoughts- Cotton embodies them. However, once Cotton returns to the farm then the viewer has to be pulled into a singular line of thought- the thought of wondering what lies just beyond the camera lens. Is Cotton wrong? Does the Devil truly walk the Earth and has he inhabited the body of this teenage girl? The evidence mounts in both directions and Cotton is stuck with the task of coming to a conclusion about his beliefs instead of riding the fence where he has been sitting for so many years now. Fabian takes the ball and runs with it during this section and without him being so strong in this middle portion, the film would fall apart.
Another excellent part of the cast is Ashley Bell who plays the put upon Nell Sweetzer. Her performance recalls the precociousness of Linda Blair in The Exorcist. Nell is a teenager who is clearly frazzled by what is happening to her and her tonal shifts from "scared, wide-eyed teen," to "body shifting, deep-throated servant of hell," are jarring. They are downright creepy as well because you feel the pain of this girl. As an actress, Bell has that ability to seamlessly go from one end of the spectrum to the other. Her and Fabian are the emotional pulses of this film and they hit every note perfectly. At every turn, you feel for this girl and regardless of what is happening to her- it is clear she is not getting the help she needs and deserves.
The last person you have to mention from the cast is Caleb Landry Jones who plays Nell's brother in the film. From the first moment he shows up you get a simmering hatred under the surface of this teenager who can barely keep the scowl off his face long enough to say "Hi." Everything about Caleb embodies the area in which they filmed. The house where Cotton travels is far off an Interstate, and sits down a dirt road at the end of a stretch of gravel. There is nowhere to go beyond this place. It literally is the last vestige of humanity in that direction. The brother is someone who relishes in the isolationism the property provides and he views Cotton and the camera crew as intruders.
At this point we need to discuss the end of the film. The ending will be incredibly divisive to those who view it. Some will think it is the only logical conclusion of the film while others will feel it's a cheat that the film employs in a race to get to the end. The real question though is: Do the last five minutes of this film negate the greatness of the prior 80 minutes? I think it does some but with a caveat. The ending doesn't feel out of place with the rest of the film to me. Director Daniel Stamm keeps the viewer guessing throughout the film. Every time the viewer thinks they know where the film is heading there is another little twist thrown at them which forces them to reassess what is happening. The ending sort of takes that out of the viewer's hands and tells you what is happening to a point. It's up to the viewer to piece together what has happened and go through their own mental Rolodex trying to piece that full puzzle together. My only problem with the ending is that it comes and goes way too quickly. This film could have used another five or ten minutes of exploration once it went down this road. The viewer then would've been able to deduce a little bit more as to what they had just seen. So what I would implore you to do is this: watch the film, and regardless of how you feel about the ending watch it a second time and try to catch everything that leads to the conclusion. The ending gives you a very broad picture of what is happening but there are plenty of nuances that are left out of the picture. This really feels like a film that will gain appreciation the more you see it. There are a ton of layers here and every viewing will allow you to pull back another one.
SO TO RECAP...
The acting performances are top notch. The script works pretty well and the "found footage" aspect doesn't really get in the way of the film here. The ending might upset you but watch the movie a second or third time and I think more of this film will make sense as the picture becomes clearer. Until the ending this film was running in 4 star territory for me, but the sheer quickness of the ending (and again not my disagreement with it) docks it a half star for me. As I see it- The Last Exorcism is worthy of...
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