To a naked eye, there isn’t too much wrong with faux-documentary The Last Exorcism, one of the only of its kind that doesn’t harp on “found” horror footage. No, Last Exorcism is a pretty cool end-of-summer treat that if I didn’t have to, wouldn’t much complain about. It’s fun, throws a few clever twists at you, and you don’t really have to think too much about it to enjoy it. Yet no matter how much I tried, I couldn’t get that out of my head. I wanted to think more during and after my showing of The Last Exorcism, to be asking myself “why?” The only thing I could in fact bring myself to think is what motive did The Last Exorcism have to come into existence had Paranormal Activity and Blair Witch Project not done so well at the box office?

I relate the movie as well to the great Exorcist, in my opinion one of the first and last epics of horror cinema. Every film based on an exorcism since then, to my memory, has basically been a PG-13 satire. (And strangely, I believe most were released in August.) The Last Exorcism is actually more Blair Witch than The Exorcist, which I could respect as somewhat original. Maybe if everything about this didn’t scream the logic of Blair Witch and steal most of the movie’s set-up, structure and, by the final ten minutes, ending. I should reveal to you, I’m not too big a fan of the style Exorcism was shooting for, because it seems with everyone that tries to establish something similar to Blair Witch I can’t help but walk out feeling cheated.

With The Last Exorcism I felt I had witnessed more a cerebral drama than I had a horror, which is more than any of the previous movies of its kind we’ve gotten this year (Piranha 3D excluded, of course) could say. It’s a movie full of odd twists, less of anything all too frightening to ever be called something terrifying beyond a marketing campaign. By feeling it has to live up to a fabled standard Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity have already set, The Last Exorcism devolves into a series of rambling shocks that don’t seem to lead anyplace.

One of the things I did like about it was its sense of humor and remarkable ability to poke fun at itself. The great way the movie establishes tongue-in-cheek is in its main character Cotton Marcus (Patrick Fabian), a renowned Louisiana priest who’s (surprise!) dramatically losing his faith. He receives a letter in the mail asking upon him to perform an exorcism, so he travels out to a farm to make good on their “urgent” request. However when he arrives he realizes the procedure is not to be done on a grown adult, yet a sixteen-year-old girl named Nell Sweetzer (Ashley Bell.) He brings along a camera crew (another poor idea, the movie uses multi-cam) to capture the fake exorcism he’s to perform, as to end the madness of the entire idea that the devil could possess a human body. Fabian as Marcus is fantastic, and it’s a kick to see his expressions change when everything isn’t what it seems on the Sweetzer farm, and how he constantly searches for a reasonable truth around every corner. Ashley Bell as Nell, the supposedly possessed teenager, hits hard with her thousand-yard stare.

In a nutshell however, what differentiates The Last Exorcism from previously mentioned Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity is the viewer’s pre-recognized idea of God and the devil and everything in-between. The movie, directed by Daniel Stamm and penned by Huck Botko and Andrew Gurland, seems to stop at establishing a haunting set-up and follows by-the-number shocks to pass off as scary. It’s only in the film’s final half hour where it quits acting like something you’ve seen before and tries to do something innovative, which I could also relate to Ti West’s The House of the Devil. It’s the wasted first hour The Last Exorcism has a hard time building off of, and that’s the final chance the movie has to do something original. If you do see it however, be sure to go in with an open mind. It’s much more fun watching with a willing crowd.

RENT IT.