Review of The Last Exorcism (2010) by Panta O — 06 Aug 2013

An outstanding found footage supernatural horror directed and edited by Daniel Stamm, a German independent filmmaker. It stars Patrick Fabian, Ashley Bell, Iris Bahr, and Louis Herthum, and they were perfectly cast. The story follows a disillusioned evangelical minister, who after years of performing exorcisms decides to participate in a documentary chronicling his last exorcism while exposing the fraud of his ministry. He is just an ordinary man struggling with ordinary problems and trying to support his family. After receiving a letter from a farmer asking for help in driving out the devil, he meets the farmer's afflicted daughter thinking that this will be just another job which will pay for his son's medical bills. But, that wasn't the case.

I am not a fan of anyone using shaky camera, but here was really appropriate to give us suspense feeling of reality in 'found footage' style (Stamm has previously directed A Necessary Death, another 'found footage' film). The movie created some controversy in the UK: a poster image for the film showed a young girl, wearing a blood-spattered dress, bent over backwards below a crucifix, received 77 complaints, the complainants describing it as "offensive", "distressing", and "unsuitable for public viewing". Of course, for such low level of complaints, most of the advertising agencies would do nothing but in this case the Advertising Standards Agency decided that the image could not be used on a publicly visible poster since that was an untargeted medium but was acceptable on the back cover of Cineworld magazine! Unusual decision which just added some extra talk about the movie.

The experience was thrilling, chilling and combined with the entertaining values of the movie, it was a refreshing addition to uninventive horror creations created daily. My choice for horror lovers.