Who you gonna call when you need an expert opinion on “The Last Exorcism?”
Your friendly neighborhood “Ghostbusters” don’t actually exist. But the Rocky Mountain Paranormal Research Society does. The group, which uses a scientific approach to study paranormal phenomena, offered up two critiques of the new horror movie that uses the real practice of exorcisms to scare us silly.
The group also has an Internet radio show Monday nights at 7 p.m. Mountain Time (9 p.m. EST).
So while WWTW already chimed in with a review, who better than Paranormal experts to give their take on the shock tale?
Today’s review comes from RMPRS’s Baxter, while Bryan Bonner shares his insights on the movie in Part 2 of this post:
The Only Salvation of This Movie Is to Leave Before the Ending
I was recently lucky enough to help host the Denver screening of “The Last Exorcism.” I arrived an hour early and the line for entry already stretched for blocks. The buzz about this film has been fantastic.
My job at this screening was to introduce the film to the audience with my paranormal partner, Bryan Bonner. We are paranormal claims investigators with Rocky Mountain Paranormal Research Society. Liongate wanted us to give a few spooky experiences that we’ve had to the audience in order to prime them for the movie. Well, give us a microphone and put us in front of a crowd and you can’t keep our mouths shut about anything!
I started explaining to the crowd that the 1973 horror classic “The Exorcist” was part of the reason we started in this business. We had, in fact, witnessed three exorcisms in the last month. We then went on to express our opinion that the exorcisms were frauds. We felt that the exorcist in question was employing hypnosis techniques to achieve the state of frenzy that he needed to get more donations. Both Bryan and I are certified hypnotherapists and recognized the approach.
We then fielded questions for the next ten minutes. They ranged from “Can I come?” to “How can you put your soul in such danger by being exposed to this stuff?”
I replied to that query with, “Someone has to do it and most of the evil we see is in the form of fraud. It has to be exposed!”
With that, we wrapped it up and got seated for the movie. Right from the start, I was enthralled with the realism of the documentary style. The main character, a lifelong reverend (I mean LIFELONG. His father was a pastor and he did his first sermon at seven years old!), just oozed with apathy about religion. He didn’t believe in anything anymore, he just did what he knew how to do and he was good at it. His sharp sense of humor and disgust for the belief of his parishioners was surprisingly entertaining to watch.
The pace of the movie really just kept going at an enthralling, building, burning rate. It was a bit like the terror one feels when the monster doesn’t run after you but only walks with a steady and unending pace. It knows that it will catch you and doesn’t have to run.
The family that calls the reverend for help is suitably creepy. The father is a fundamentalist that doesn’t really know how to think for himself. The daughter is terribly sheltered from the outside world and may be suffering from abuse from her father. The son is clever and scarred by all that he has seen. He thinks the father is the problem and not the work of demons at all.
Throughout the movie, the tension is well broken up with humor. Those little breaks from the stress really make the movie that much more powerful.
Any demon worth his salt is going to confuse us. It would want us to think that insanity is more probable than the existence of demons. It keeps dropping clues in both directions to keep us off balance. “The Last Exorcism” does just that extremely well. The reverend and the documentary film crew are faced with solving this mystery and their feelings of despair are palpable as they draw closer to their own truths. They come to a point where they truly feel that they have it solved.
This is the point where you should leave the theater. The ending is a tacked-on, ’70s B-movie rip-off that ruined what was the best horror movie I have seen in years.
Now, I know that you are going to stay and watch the ending anyway, but you have been warned. Maybe the warning in itself will make the impact of the fall from grace that this film takes a bit more tolerable.
When this particular demon possesses someone, there is only one way for their soul’s salvation: Exorcism or death. It seems to me that killing the victim would be a “cop-out” way out. The hard effort of making an exorcism work is the noble action to take. Well, these movie makers gave up on the hard work and just went ahead and shot the movie in the face.
It turns out that their initial hard work is what really saved the soul of this movie.
(Photo: Ashley Bell stars as ‘Nell Sweetzer’ in “The Last Exorcism.” Photo credit: Patti Perret)
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