The Last Exorcism (2010)
Directed by Daniel Stamm
After years of performing “exorcisms” and taking believers’ money, Reverend Marcus travels to rural Louisiana with a film crew so he can dispel what he believes is the myth of demonic possession. The dynamic reverend is certain that this will be another routine “exorcism” on a disturbed religious fanatic but instead comes upon the blood-soaked farm of the Sweetzer family and a true evil he would have never thought imaginable.
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What critics compared The Last Exorcism to
Like The Blair Witch Project (1999) and Paranormal Activity (2009) before it, The Last Exorcism employs the very effective "fake documentary" format.
Thereâs certainly plenty of otherwise freaky behavior on display, but until its final moments itâs the most grounded found-footage flick since 1999âs The Blair Witch Project.
And while the mockumentary structure that seemed so terrifyingly fresh in 1999’s The Blair Witch Project has been overused by low-budget filmmakers, it works beautifully in The Last Exorcism; by filtering events through a single perspective, the filmmakers can reveal information at their own deliberate pace.
But assuming that they haven't seen either "The Blair Witch Project" (1999) or last year's "Paranormal Activity"?
It borrows conceptually from the brilliant no-budget mock-documentary “The Blair Witch Project” (1999) and the slightly less brilliant “Paranormal Activity” (2009) without any of the intelligence or humanity the makers of those films displayed.
Great movies about paranormal investigators struggling with doubts like William Friedkin’s The Exorcist (1973) and Daniel Stamm’s underrated The Last Exorcism (2010) slowly ramp up tension by presenting plausible explanations for supernatural phenomenon, making both the characters and audience guess whether or not the hauntings are all a bunch of hooey.
“Nun” lacks the constant sense of dread and unsettling doom of similarly themed films such as “The Exorcist” or even “The Last Exorcism,” though there’s one notable scene of “perpetual adoration” – the marathon prayer the abbey’s nuns maintain to keep Valak at bay – that’s visceral and torturous for poor Sister Irene.
“Chronicle” is the latest found-footage, shaky-camera fad film in a string of many prior to it including the wildly successful and profitable “Paranormal Activity” films (now four of them in total), 2010’s “The Last Exorcism,” 2008’s “Cloverfield” and 1999’s “The Blair Witch Project”.
What makes Chronicle stand out from the shaky-cam crowd is its dark, complex moral centre – four words not usually associated with a genre that began with the notorious Cannibal Holocaust, peaked with The Blair Witch Project, begat terrific entertainment like Paranormal Activity, [Rec] and Lake Mungo, yet is still most often associated with dirge like Cloverfield, Apollo 18, The Last Exorcism and The Devil Inside.
Or "The Exorcism of Emily Rose" or "The Rite" or "The Last Exorcism" or ...
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That's not to say some good movies haven't been produced employing this slant — 2010's The Last Exorcism immediately springs to mind — but The Visit won't be joining their ranks.
The granddaddy of the possession genre is, and will probably always be, "The Exorcist," but more recent examples, like 2000's underrated " Lost Souls ," 2005's astounding " The Exorcism of Emily Rose " and 2010's documentary-style " The Last Exorcism ," have also ably pulled their own weight.
2010’s “The Last Exorcism” turned the world of demonic expulsion into a magic show, portraying the practice as a fraud, a grift, or most generously, a faith exercise for the truly disturbed.
"The Ring," "The Others" and "The Last Exorcism" (to name a few) only rated a PG-13.
Unlike The Last Exorcism , you never get the feeling that they’re schemers or opportunists; the Warrens feel more like going to a kindly country preacher and his wife to discuss a wavering in faith.
Happily lifting scenes and ideas from previous cheapo horror flicks like “The Amityville Horror,” “The Last Exorcism,” “The Woman in Black,” “Paranormal Activity” and others too numerous to count, “The Conjuring” is far from “brilliant,” as Variety’s Justin Chang described it.
Roth turned his attention to producing (The Last Exorcism, Aftershock) and occasional acting (Inglourious Basterds) for a while, but now he’s back in theaters with two new movies he directed, Knock Knock and The Green Inferno, an unintentional double feature caused by a delay in the latter’s release.
He’s also doing well as a producer, helping to bring films like The Last Exorcism and Sacrament to the screen.
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In a fast-moving montage, Charles and Erik round up Angel Salvadore (Zoë Kravitz, "It's Kind of a Funny Story"), a stripper with wings; Sean Cassidy (Caleb Landry Jones, "The Last Exorcism"), a rejected kid able to emit high pitched sound waves; cab driver Armando Muñoz (Edi Gathegi, "Twilight's" Laurent), an immigrant with a talent for self preservation and Alex Summers (Lucas Till, "Battle: Los Angeles"), a young prison inmate who can radiate missile-like energy.
Where Paranormal Activity and Cloverfield had mass audiences eating it up, the acclaim was more divided when it came to films such as The Last Exorcism and Unfriended .