The Devil Inside (2012)

Aren't we all a little tired of exorcism movies?  Especially faux-documentary ones?  Ever since I switched to one-DVD-at-a-time from Netflix and got an internet TV, I've been a little lax on keeping up with my DVD queue.  This floated to the top somehow, and after a particularly tough day at work, my husband suggested we watch it.

So, I'm going to be unpopular and say I kinda liked this movie. I sort of do have a soft spot for exorcism movies as it is, but I found this one fairly creepy.  The story is about a woman, Maria Rossi, who randomly killed three members of her church group.  Except we find out it wasn't so random.  These individuals were attempting to perform an exorcism on her when she killed them.  In what appears to be a coverup, she gets shipped off to Italy to live in a mental institution.  Years later, the young daughter she had when she committed the murders, Isabella, is now grown. She's desperate to find out what happened to her mother, and takes a trip to Italy to investigate.

While there, she finds two rogue priests that are into doing exorcisms that were denied by the Catholic church.  After inviting her to view a particularly disturbing exorcism, they express interest in meeting her mother.  Her mother is seriously creepy, and at first doesn't recognize Isabella, then suddenly comments on something she did that she couldn't possibly have known.  This woman really scared me.

The Catholic church has no interest in revisiting an exorcism, but the priests and Isabella decide to go through with it anyway.  Needless to say, it doesn't really go well.  Post-attempted exorcism, one of the priests begins to show some very odd behavior.

Transference is nothing new to exorcism movies...after all, we saw it in The Exorcist, didn't we? But I think it worked here all the same.  The end was kind of meh, but the short length of the movie was great in my opinion.  So I may be against the popular vote, but I enjoyed this flick.  It also made me want to revisit The Exorcism of Emily Rose, which I hated at first, but maybe it would have grown on me over the years?  Overall The Devil Inside was worth 1 hour and 15 minutes of my horror-filled life.

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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The Blackwater Valley Exorcism

I got this movie assuming it would be a direct ripoff of The Exorcism of Emily Rose. I hated that freakin' movie, so I don't know what compelled me to put this in my queue. When I watch low-budget horror flicks, I always watch the trailers that are on them. I suspect that's where I unearthed this gem.

So I'm hoping that this particular exorcism movie is without that super-creepy scene where Emily Rose is all distorted in her dorm room. That shit seriously gave me the willies and that movie was not even scary. Anyway, I digress.

This movie starts with some freaky chick in the woods, clad in a nightgown, having killed and eaten a woodland creature. Some people (apparently relatives or friends) find her, and guide her back to her house and parents. Surprise, surprise, she's possessed. She speaks in a man's voice, beats up her mom, slices herself all up, and accuses her dad of molestation.

So they strap this crazy chick (Isabelle) to the bed and try to find someone to cure her.  They first try their handyman, who was a priest in Mexico or somesuch thing.  Dude seems seriously freaked out about having to deal with this and I'm going to imagine he doesn't get paid enough for this nonsense.  They even bring in a veteranarian (hahaha) to give her some horse tranquilizers, but even that is not enough to keep this psycho bitch from going all Reagan on everyone.
Finally, they bring in the town priest and that's where this movie pretty much turns into Days of Our Lives with a low budget demon make-up job.  Apparently, (I don't have this entirely straight though) the priest used to date Isabelle's sister and also abused her (?)  In addition, he fooled around with Isabelle which somehow has resulted in her being possessed.

I expected this movie to be pretty corny, but it was honestly even worse than I imagined.  Over dramatized acting, rip-off of every exorcism movie made, and stupid soap opera plot.  Skip it.