As it began there were several interesting avenues of exploration that I could see The Last Exorcism heading towards. We start off watching a charlatan preacher-man explaining to us his crisis of faith. How he offers a service and makes the faithful believe they've witnessed an exorcism, but it's all smoke and mirrors. There are no demons, he says. He shows us the wires, the gadgetry with which he accomplishes his fraud on people - a fraud he passes off as simultaneously well-intentioned and money-grubbing, of course. He's helping them, but he's got mouths to feed too, you know. A deaf kid no less, to be shown once at the start and never be heard (ba dum bum) from again.But the preacher has grown weary of the sham and wants to prove to the world that exorcism is nothing more than a parlor trick, so he's called up these documentarians to film him perpetrating his fraud and finally end the harmful medieval practice for good. Unfortunately, as with so many film characters retiring from so many different professions, our preacher-man is going to learn the hard way that it's The One Last Job that'll always be the one to getcha.
Or something. The film doesn't have the courage of its own convictions, and never successfully follows through on any of the conceits it raises early on. It gets so caught up running from one explanation to the next, from one foggy set of motivations to another, that nothing solidifies except for the murk in between. These characters are like chess pieces being scattered across a board by someone who's intimately familiar with only Connect Four. It turns out to never be about anything. And a silly final-act twist only underlines that. We've spent so much time staring at the smoke and the mirrors that we don't have any connection to this supposed truth once it presents itself. Why are we supposed believe what we're seeing now? Or, more importantly, care?It can't even keep its own style straight - this single camera crew is suddenly shooting the same scene from several different angles, and spooky music nonsensically shows up whenever the real film-makers need to goose the proceedings. If a film works on me, if it scares me and wraps me up in the tale its unfurling, then I'm the last person to get caught up on these sorts of stylistic slips. But here they're symptomatic of the whole damn-the-details approach they took the this thing from the top down. There is no devil in this film because there is no soul for it to prey upon in the first place.
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4 comments:
I must say that I most respectfully disagree...
I thought the film worked very well because it took its time with the characters up front (especially the preacher - c'mon, you had to like the banana bread scene), so that when things go to hell, you actually did care what happened to him. As well, it's really his own confession, not just about him swindling people but also about his loss of faith. So when you do have that change towards the end, you've seen him come full circle and regain his belief. Of course, it's a bit too late at that point...
It's not perfect (I wasn't keen on where it went in its last third or so), but it developed some real atmosphere and tension in the middle. In the end, I think it's one of the stronger American horror films released in the last few years.
It's weird to me that I feel as if my problem with the film is that it lost sight of its characters and instead got bogged down in their actions when at the same time all their actions were so redundant and inactive, but that's basically it. All the characters just flail about not really doing anything until the end. Going to the farm, leaving the farm, going back to the farm, leaving the farm, they do it like five times and I really don't think anyone's motivations were ever convincing, even if you go back and piece things together after the ending... an ending I would've been fine with if I'd cared about any of them by that point. But I didn't give a hoot about these people by the end. I just don't think the director was talented enough to play his sleight-of-hand games, waving his arms back and forth between "Are there really demons or is this girl just nuts?", and at the same time keep the characters resembling anything of interest by that point. There was no cohesive arc to any character's progression after about the midpoint from where I sat. Cotton's restoration of faith at the end, while telegraphed from a light year away, just sort of happened. I never felt any of their traumas or horrors in my gut.
Really enjoyed reading this. I am still on the fence. I will see it at some point, just unsure whether to shell out my dough for a theater visit. I fear I will agree wholeheartedly with your take on it.
I, too, am on the fence about this one, but when Devil comes out, you can count me in for that one! I guess this movie reminds me too much of movies like The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Leap of Faith, and Paranormal Activity. My boyfriend says I'm being picky, but now that I have to pay for my movie tickets, I'm going to make sure it's worth it.
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