Review of The Last Exorcism Part II (2013) by Darlene L — 25 Nov 2013

Putting aside how absurd a sequel to something called "The Last" anything sounds, here is my review of The Last Exorcism Part II:

The film is not entirely without merits. There's a couple of seriously great visuals. The opening sequence is quite a strong scene and setup (despite this though, it is promptly dropped all together). Ashley Bell in the leas role has proved herself a more than capable character actor, and the effects quality (while not great) has taken a step up since the previous instalment.

Aaaaand that's about every nice thing I can bring myself to say. Even before the mentions of salt lines and Croatoan I felt that it played out almost like an episode of Supernatural that's overly long and has intensely boring characters. Beyond links like this it still feels like an episode of a TV show. One that the events of which were initially meant to be crammed into the final five minutes of the penultimate episode for the season, but the show-runners realised that they were going to be an episode short for what they were commissioned to produce so the then had to stretch it out with fuller bullshit to make it into a full episode. Except that it's even worse, 'cause this isn't a twenty, thirty, forty or even fifty minute episode of something, it's a full hour and a half of crap, the previous "episode" of which we left behind three years ago.

It was offensive to devotees of the original (if any besides me exist, if not then at least to me). And it brought nothing off even remote interest to any potential newcomers. I can understand dropping the found footage format of the first film, that way lies Paranormal Activity, and avoiding any similarities with that stream of garbage is always a good plan. But beyond that, all change is bad change, and almost all events of the predecessor are unceremoniously cast aside.

I kept looking at the time while watching this and thinking to myself, "Wow it's a quarter of the way through and it's still just tension building", then "a third of the way through and it's still just tension building?" then half, then two thirds, then so and so forth until I got to the stage where there was nine minutes left and I realised that it wasn't "tension" at all, it was just lazy disjointed events that Botko and Gurland seem to think constitutes an actual film. I am a huge fan of suspense. Huge. But this was not suspense I felt, it was boredom. The payoff for which was a couple of seconds of poorly shot but semi-cool lead up to a potential third film the series doesn't deserve.

So Part II? It was, truly awful. But it still in no way effects my opinion of the film this is a sequel to. The Last Exorcism, was, and remains a solid and original piece of cinema.

22%.

-Gimly.