Whorticulture: August 2010

Whorticulture.com movie review of The Last Exorcism, directed by Eli Roth

The Last Exorcism

The Last Exorcism was introduced to us by a theater employee who asked for a show of hands: “How many of you saw The Blair Witch?” he asked. I raised my hand begrudgingly, while many seemed to raise their hand eagerly. “Now, how many of you did it scare the pants off of?” I quickly lowered my hand. “So now, how many of you saw Paranormal State?” I re-raised my hand. “How many of you did it terrify?” I took my hand down. “Well,” he concluded, “this movie is like The Blair Witch and Paranormal Activity had a baby.”

“Great,” I thought. “This is a sign that it’s going to be terrible.” I imagined writing this review with my tail between my legs, sad at myself for not getting the hint.

Then Eli Roth came on the screen, informing us that we were some of the first in the world to see this movie. He explained that it was driven entirely by word of mouth, which isn’t really true, because I’ve seen way more commercials for this than I did for Paranormal Activity (which was known for being entirely driven by word of mouth), and I only heard about it via the commercials. He asked us to tweet about it, and tweet him personally (as well as Lions Gate) and tell them what we thought. Don’t worry, Mr. Roth, I most certainly did.

So the basic plot of the movie is this. You have this preacher named Cotton. Cotton was raised to be “touched by the holy spirit,” so much so, that he doesn’t even really know if he has genuine faith or if it’s just that indoctrinated into him. Cotton is a showman. He readily admits that he’s basically a fraud, and that most of what he does is all for show. That adds a sadness to him, but he’s a pretty funny, likable character all around (even if he is a fraud). He decides to get out of the exorcism business after seeing an article about a 10 year old boy who was suffocated during an exorcism, and he can’t in good conscience continue to do what he does, in the chance that he might hurt someone. What you have, then, is a movie about a film crew filming (you guessed it), his last exorcism.

And off he goes. He has no idea what he’s in for.

This movie has comedy much on par with Bill Maher’s Religulous. The audience exploded in laughter quite often in the first half of the movie (the second half having a much more serious tone).

It also touts some of the best horror-suspense I’ve seen in a long, long time. I was literally grabbing onto my boyfriend, balling my hand into a fist so tight that my knuckles and wrist began to ache, and chewing on my thumb nail. This just does not happen to me. I’m far too jaded for that to happen, and yet there I was, jumping and cowering with the rest of the crowd.

It’s not easy for a movie to combine horror and comedy. I can really only think of one other movie I feel accomplished this so seamlessly, and that’s Shaun of the Dead. But I digress.

Here I am, 95% through the movie and incredibly excited about writing this review. I have two friends on twitter to whom I can't wait to proclaim my love of this movie…

And then, it happened. A terrible, cliché, and downright disappointing ending. Horror fans will recognize it right away as cliché. In fact, they’ll immediately think of the other, more famous movie that already did it in the 1970’s. I can’t really go into what was wrong with the ending without giving too much away, but I can say this in very loose terms. The ending makes a lot of the rest of the movie questionable at best (in the sort of “so wait, if that’s the case, how did this happen?” kind of way), and it’s WAY too abrupt. I mean, is this the new vein in movies? It seems like I say this a lot, that it ended too prematurely. All this serves to do is open up a ton of questions with the viewer, but it feels like maybe Eli Roth and the other makers of this movie were just too lazy to give it a better ending. “No, it’ll leave ‘em guessing.”

All I’m really guessing at is why you ruined this movie.

I don’t even want to rate it. It’s a 9, maybe a 9.5 until the last 5 – 10 minutes. Then it drops down to a 6, and that’s being generous. I’m so, so disappointed.