The Last Exorcism (2010)

There's nothing I hate more than spiritualists or mediums; the idea of anyone exploiting sensitive peoples emotions just sickens me. 
Some might say it's a white lie that puts people's minds at rest and while i'm a strong advocate of telling white lies that put people's minds at rest, I've never asked anyone to pay me for the privilage.
It should also be mentioned at this point, the fact I'm not a big watcher of horror films. Of the big genres, I give horror the least attention and need a big pull to make me watch. I am also a big fraidy cat.
So all in all, this might make watching The Last Exorcism seem like a foreign prospect. Maybe I'm expecting 2wrongs to make a right...
I had little interest in this film until I saw clips that showed it was about a self proclaimed religious shyster, a character that was showing the tricks of performing an exorcism. Yeah so i knew it was going to get spookier as it proceded like 'Hold up-i didn't do that... that was real' sorta thing but the initial concept was good enough ignite my interest.
Like I say I'm no horror movie scholar but I thought this was perdy darn good. I understand that over there in horror movies, they have a problem with character development. Mainly cos they might not be sticking around for too long... but that's no excuse guys-ya gotta make well defined characters y'all or your audience won't care about anything that happens to them. Anyway, the makers of The Last Exorcism have great characters especially our protagonist- Cotton, the cynical preacher and exorcist. Cynical characters can be a tough sell- making someone likeable when he's essentially a party-pooper but Cotton is quite accessible. He just comes across as a guy who messes around with religion to feed his family and it appeals to his need to perform. I noticed that when Cotton is performing, it's much like watching improv- like his art is just preparation and reacting legitimately to what people say to him.
But then again maybe the protagonist is the camera; this shot like a documentary, that a documentary crew are following Cotton so we see everything in the first person. Everyone is aware that there is a camera on them so when they go to perform this exorcism in rural Americana, we watch people initially react to it and slowly relax and also members of the film crew become part of the story- I appriciate that as one of the things that bugs me about 'reality'- media is you never see those parts like how people react to that crew and visa-versa. This has a great story and it's not predicable either. I'd love to say this was one of the great faux-documentries but there are so many
great faux-documentries; i love that genre but surfice to say this is better than Blair Witch in everyway. Except scarier. But I don't like scary movies...


I watched The Last Exorcism (2010) on DVD, via LoveFilm.
My 2011 In Movies will return with A Fistful of Dynamite (1972)...