The Last Exorcism is a horror movie done in the style of a documentary.  The plot is that a preacher (Patrick Fabian; Veronica Mars)  has doubted his faith in God and after reading an article about how a child near his son’s age died during an exorcism is plagued with guilt and decides to get a documentary crew to follow him as he performs one final exorcism to show just how fake it is and all the tricks he uses.  But this particular exorcism is a lot more complicated than he, or anyone else anticipated.  Soon the crew and the preacher are forced to make tough decisions and are questioning what exactly is going on.

If you’re a regular reader then you know I have a love of documentaries.  But I also have a deep love of mockumentaries, or fake documentaries.  These come in all different flavors, though most often in comedy and horror.  You’ve see The Blair Witch Project and more recently Paranormal Activity.  Some are better than others and it really depends on what they’re trying to achieve.  A big part of these films is that you buy into the whole documentary part of it.  And this does it alright.  It’s not great and there’s some stuff that throws it off, but overall they did a good job keeping with that feel.

As for the rest of the movie, I will say I was entertained.  As a horror buff this didn’t have me on edge so much and it wasn’t really gore filled, but it did have some interesting things including a nice twist at the end.  The acting is overall not so great.  A big problem with films like this is that there is a really tough balance between acting and not acting that’s incredibly hard.  Some actors were more convincing then others.  I think the father’s (Louis Herthum) performance was really solid.

The other thing I really liked about this was the solid character motivations.  The events and the way the characters were laid out provided strong backbones to motivate emotions.  This is best seen in the preacher.  You’d ordinarily find yourself questioning why these people didn’t just leave but you understand his story and that he feels for this girl and is a good man when it comes down to it who really just wants to get this girl the help she needs and is doing anything he can to make sure that happens.  He’s essentially repenting for his years of ripping people off by doing these fake exorcisms.  So that little piece of writing and the performance behind it that made you really get it without needing to be said was pretty good.

Overall this feels like a rental to me.  It’s probably not something you’re going to watch a whole bunch of times, but it’s solid and entertaining for when you’re in the mood for a little bit of a scare.