The Last Exorcism (2010)

I'm really getting pretty tired of exorcism movies, but I like Eli Roth, so I decided to give this one a chance.  The Last Exorcism is the story of Rev. Cotton Marcus, who was raised by his father to be a preacher.  After the difficult birth of his son, he realizes that he put more trust in the doctors than in God, and therefore begins to question his faith.

Because of this, he allows a documentary crew to film what he plans on being his last exorcism.  Cotton is sort of making a joke of his congregation at this point, preaching to them about banana bread as they cry "Praise Jesus!"  He tells the documentary crew that he will open at random one of the many letters begging him for help, and that will be the end of his exorcist days.  He tears open a letter from Louis Sweetzer, which details the deaths of his livestock and possible possession of his daughter Nell.  Cotton chuckles at the standardness of this exorcism request, and they take off for rural Lousiana.

The crew gets there to find a drunk father, a surly teenager, and a teenage daughter who keeps waking up covered in blood.  Cotton begins the exorcism process and we learn that this whole thing is a farce.  He has all this trickery and illusions in order to make onlookers think that they're in the presence of a demon, but not so much.  He finishes the "exorcism" and takes the cash, but it doesn't take long to realize that this chick needed Father Karras and not some half-assed faker.

This movie was a pretty cool buildup to an ending that seriously sucked ass.  It's like the writers just gave up like three-quarters of the way into the script.  I thought this movie definitely had potential, and Ashley Bell was seriously creepy.  But the ending just fell so flat and much was left totally unxplained.  Meh.

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