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Saturday, September 4, 2010

The Last Exorcism......Hopefully the LAST one ever!!!



How do you take a creepy story and a filmmaking style that adds creepy realism and turn it into an hour and a half of boring? That's easy, bad writing, bad acting and bad music.

As with most horror films the build up seems to take to long. The film starts talking to a preacher (Cotton) and his family about how he used to be an exorcist and thinks it's all fake and is going to make a documentary to show that it's a scam. In the style of Paranormal Activity and Blair Witch Project, The Last Exorcist is a fake documentary and therefore had a realistic and creepy feel to it, or at least it should have. Not sure why they went with a camera that takes 2 minutes to get into focus.

The acting and writing right away ruins the movie. As the story continues and we follow Cotton into deep Louisiana to find his client, I already started to not care what happens. As I watched it I couldn't help but think, "Who talks like this?" it wasn't normal bad horror movie conversation, it was below average. It was two of the worst things that can happen together (bad acting and bad writing) because if it was a good actor saying bad lines sometimes they can pull it off, or if its good dialog and bad actors sometimes you can not notice. However, when you team these up it gets painful.

My third problem with the film is the music. If you decide to make a movie as a documentary, try to make it realistic, KEEP THE MUSIC OUT OF IT! The lack of music is usually way more creepy than overdone "spooky" music that has been used by every ghost TV show and every horror movie ever. When you finally get to the "scary" parts that the trailers show you get excited, "alright the movie has been bad, but maybe it will be scary and save itself." Nope. Doesn't happen. Though they had scenes that should have been awesome and made you wide eyed and ready to freak, that music comes in to ruin it. What you're left with is a one cheap jump and no nightmares.

I will say with all the bad stuff aside, the film did have some things I liked, though few. They did a good job making some creepy scenes, though they were ruined. When we first see her sitting in the motel room, when we see her bending weird, that quick smile as the door closes and her sitting on top of the furniture in her room. All of these scenes were well crafted and would have stayed in my thoughts, but ruined due to acting, writing, and music.

I cant help but notice the trailers resemblance to Exorcism of Emily Rose. Both showed the "scary" scenes and made you think the movie was about a possessed girl, (like the exorcist) however both times the trailers showed all the time the girl was acting weird. They leave out the other hour and twenty minutes that had nothing. Well, good for them, they tricked me and got my money

Now, to that ending:

I've heard that many people are upset with the abrupt ending, but that's the least of the ending problems. Honestly, at this point I can't wait for the ending. First off, as I'm sure many people noticed, the Rosemary's Baby's ending. I don't really have a problem if during a movie you reference or pay homage to classic horror films, but you don't take that movies twist ending and use it for your ending, especially not twice. Taking the Rosemary's Baby's ending and strapping it to The Blair Witch Project's ending made that abrupt ending a godsend. I felt like yelling at the film to stop when I saw the baby being born and all the townsfolk being a cult. Then what do I see? The camera man running through the woods. I kept waiting for him to stop and look into the camera and say, "I'm so scared." (also, If your getting attacked by a cult would you really run away with the camera? Especially with the camera on your shoulder? I don't think so.) Then the brother shows up, cuts the cameraman's head off, the end. (Fart noise)

I really wish this story would have gotten into somebody else's hands, because it had potential

Wouldn't recommend this film to anyone. Obviously some people like it but don't take that chance. Because most likely you will leave disappointed.I'm a big horror fan,meaning that I watch almost every horror movie (from Uwe Boll's low budgets to Michael Bay's remakes/blockbusters),but this was too much for me to handle.