For those of you who intend to go and see this film and don’t want it ruined, I advise you to stop reading as I undoubtedly will have to reveal spoilers to fully explain why I was so disappointed and, in a way, furious.

I’m an avid fan of being terrified. I could say “an avid fan of horror movies” but how do we even define a horror anymore? Is a good horror movie defined by its use of gore? Of obscuring the “baddy”? Of providing constant situations of “jumpy bits”? Horror nowadays seems to fall into a new genre of “Torture porn”. The more disturbed and disgusted the viewer, the more the movie is deemed a good horror. Saw has become a parody of itself with numerous sequels, all more gruesome and, lets face it, desperate than the next. Two new movies on the market are actually deemed too disgusting for viewing. These all fall under the horror genre, and the sub-genre of torture-porn.

So it came as a breath of fresh air when I saw the trailer and the idea for The Last Exorcism. Who doesn’t love a good exorcism script? Or at the very least, a good demonic script. The promise of the reviews and the trailer were of a film about a teenage girl suspected of possession, and a sceptical reverend doing his final exorcism upon said adolescent. From the snippets in the trailer, it looked to be positively brick-shitting material. And so, my sister and I, ever up for a good horror movie, went to see it.

It begins in documentary format, introducing us to the good Rev. Cotton Marcus, a prodigious child preacher grown up to be a sceptical adult who just wants to get the bills paid, and as we get further in, to show the world that exorcisms are a load of tosh. He explains how his faith became shaky after reading about a young boy who died during an exorcism, and so now, with his team of Iris (total lesbian potential, insert gay link here) and Daniel, wants to show how an exorcism is usually just a state of mind that can be cured by a great performance.

He opens a random letter and skims over it, finds his place for his final, eye-opening exorcism. He and the team head to the far reaches of Louisiana, where roads have no business and your true colours are marked by how many pieces of machinery are randomly placed around your yard. They meet Louis, concerned father who informs them of the usual symptoms of possession that furthered his suspicions. Livestock dead: check. Unusual, unrecalled behaviour by perfect victim teenage daughter: check.

Cotton gets to meet Nell, sixteen year old angel that she is, and finds out a little more about her. If the pictures done in colouring pencil of different biblical figures don’t worry you, I’m sure the Laura Ashley/dollhouse and pony toy combination will. Too sweet and polite to be true, hell yes. So the good Rev. chats to the father, then to Nell, does a test to see if she boils water with her feet (sign of a requirement of a good exorcism don’t you know) and voila, we have a keeper.

In short, he cons them. He fixes up a sound-system of demon sounds, rigs different moveable objects in the room and acts out his part perfectly. The deed is done, she’s grand, he counts his money, and he’s off to a motel nearby to rest. All’s well there anyway. Until Nell shows up, eyes all trippy and nonchalantly vomiting on herself. How she got there, five miles out of the way with no transport is curious. Not to mention that they didn’t inform her or Daddy of where they were staying. They rush her to hospital, she ends up being fine, she goes home. The Rev is still worried so he pops out to their home and we find out she’s attacked her brother. He’s rushed to hospital with daddy, and our team are left alone in house. Creepy much? Needless to say it gets worse.

What follows provides ample evidence of demonic possession and a botched exorcism. The team find three of Nell’s drawn pictures: one of a cat covered in blood, one of the Rev holding a cross to a bonfire, and one of the team dead in various ways. Team get frightened. Nell gets all loopy and drowns a doll in the bath while making bone-chillingly realistic baby screams, steals the camera while the others are sleeping and snaps her neck then goes and bludgeons a cat (naked by the way), is placed back in her room in a normal state and later is heard speaking to a male voice (which stops when the others check on her). Later on, we find out Nell is pregnant via phonecall from doctor and assumptions are made about Daddy.

Daddy comes home, Daddy is informed of pregnancy. Daddy provides ultimatum: Exorcise her again, or I’ll take care of baby. Rev plans to steal Nell away while Daddy is out praying by Mamma’s grave. Lights go out, shit gets real. Screams are heard and thrashing from Nell’s room, Rev and co. run up to help her, they enter darkened, thrashed room (because that’s a good idea) and find her atop the wardrobe glaring maniacally at Dan-cam. She’s brought down, goes mental hissing at team, legs it downstairs and ends up outside. Rev tries to calm her, Daddy shoots shotgun, terrified running and screaming into house ensues and new exorcism is agreed upon.

New exorcism happens in creepy death-barn with many tools and dead cat somewhere out of shot. Girl bends backwards and snaps neck several times, mocks Rev and co. Snaps own fingers, becomes all loony-like, but then lets us all down. It is revealed that she’s not possessed at all, but is so badly traumatised by her shame of being pregnant that she carried out all of this mental behaviour. Cut to daytime and she explains about local boy who was lovely and got her pregnant. Doesn’t seem too ashamed now. Local pastor and wife come to talk.

All seems well and Rev and co. leave. Everyone in the cinema is pissed. Rev passes local café and pops in to see father-of-baby. Father of baby is gay and only spoke with Nell once, at one of the pastor’s parties for Sunday-schoolers (yes I know). Rev is worried, they drive back to house, house is darkened and covered in occult symbolism. So now we’re all on the edge of our seat thinking “Oh shit, she really was possessed and she’s after taking out the house”. No sign of anyone but we hear screams from outside, far into the woods. Rev and co. go to woods, spy on random occult ceremony which is lead by (brace yourself) the good local Pastor. His wife is delivering Nell’s child (forcefully), and when it comes out, she pegs it into the massive bonfire which suddenly becomes demonic-sounding. Rev goes out to exorcise bonfire, team run like hell from cult-members. Team die the way it was in pictures. That’s it.

My biggest problem was that they could have done so much more, but then the last ten minutes just became this flurry of “what the hell?”. It really was like they say down five different people and said “Write me an ending for this”, took each and mashed it up into this totally off-the-wall, pointless ending. The part in the barn could have been spectacular, it could have been demonic and provide ample terror. But instead it just made it into a film about a girl who got pregnant and created this massive lie. It had no real horror after that, and when they suddenly made the baby a demon and the pastor and his crew a bunch of loony occultists out in the woods, then tried to make Nell look psychic with her drawings becoming real, it lost all respect from me. It was ambiguous to say the least, and threw out so many questions that it didn‘t feel the need to answer . I’m not suggesting you don’t go see it because of what I’m saying, but if you, like myself and my equally furious sister, were expecting greatness, stay until the barn scene becomes creepy then give up and make your own ending. This film ends badly, in my opinion, and it brought a bad taste to my mouth because it truly had such promise and offered so much potential. If you want real fear and a constant look-over-your-shoulder feeling, I suggest leaving this one alone.

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