Our second featured movie review comes from the blog Movie Reviews, From Gene Shalit's Moustache. This blogger (and Cinemit member) is reviewing The Last Exorcism, which he and other lucky Cinemit members saw at a screening held on August 16th. Without further ado, the review:
Sneak Preview Review- "The Last Exorcism"
Movie Review by Matthew Schuchman- Two and a half out of Five 'Staches.
Recently, I have given up hope that someone will again release a decent to great horror film. I would have liked to have said that, "The Last Exorcism" stepped up to the plate, but that would not be true. But that doesn't mean this is a bad film, but horror fans will most probably be very disappointed with the final result.
Like a pile of films before it, "The Last Exorcism" uses a handheld camera that is filming a "Documentary" to try to bring a more realistic feel to the film. The film makers succeed in giving the film a more genuine documentary feel for about the first half of the film, but everyone knows it is just a horror flick when it all comes down to it. This time around we are following, Reverend Cotton Marcus (Patrick Fabian) as he goes to show a documentary crew of two, how as a preacher, he fakes an exorcism; for the last time. As you probably know, things do not go as planned.
"The Last Exorcism" is for a good portion, pretty funny, which I was not expecting. Fabian hams it up as the over exuberant showman preacher, which is what the character calls for. It doesn't seem to get in the way too much when things start to go awry either, but during the entire movie, he just comes off a little too calm. You will get jumps and scares at times as you expect when watching the film, but it can't seem to really deliver a memorable scare that is worth mentioning to your friends. That fact alone may make you jump up and call "The Last Exorcism" a failure, but the film is triumphant in another way. Where films like, "Paranormal Activity" and "[REC]" or its American version, "Quarantine" are made to make you jump every five seconds and are straight forward scare-fest, "The Last Exorcism" feels more like "28 Days Later", a film that is trying to tell you a story and has a horror themed background and is marketed more to horror audiences to get that niche money in the box office.
The most disappointing thing about the film is the ending by far. It isn't a bad ending and besides parts of it being a little, grandiose, I actually appreciated the road they took and the little parts of the film I can go back and think twice about, knowing what happens. Though, I would have been praising this film up and down if it ended about 15-20 minutes earlier as it would have made for one hell of a metaphorical piece. It would have pissed off horror fans beyond belief if that were the case and it wouldn't have won the film any awards, but it would have made for an amazing conversation starter. When all is said and done with what is put on-screen though, nothing special is being offered to the audience but nothing was totally ruined.
I guess I will have to wait a little longer till the half CGI/half live action film of "The Smurfs" comes out to be completely horrified by a film, but "The Last Exorcism" was actually a nice stop off, even if it didn't make me crap myself. I would say you won't completely be wasting your time if you go see the film when it hits theaters on August 27th. I would also like to thank my friends over at Cinemit.com for giving me the chance to get passes to see this film early. If you are interested in getting into a preview screening or two in the near future, make sure you stop by their site and sign up; it's free.
Thank you to Movie Reviews, From Gene Shalit's Moustache for this movie review, and the shout-out! The views in the above review do not represent the views of Cinemit.
