The Last Exorcism (2010)

“The Last Exorcism” is a single camera, found footage movie that’s about a disillusioned reverend who is working with a film crew to expose his secrets on how he performs fraudulent exorcisms. This movie is a great example that not every horror movie needs an R rating (this is PG-13) to be effective. Horror movies don’t have to have endless gore, nudity, and profanity to be scary.

From a very young age, Reverend Cotton Marcus was groomed to be a man of god. As a child he began delivering riveting sermons and even performed his fist exorcism when he was ten. Now as an adult with a family of his own, Cotton has lost his faith and is giving up his career as an exorcist. He always believed that he was helping people and performing a service, for a fee, but after reading about an autistic child dying while having an exorcism performed made Cotton decide to give up this line of work. Before doing so, Cotton has agreed to perform one last exorcism and have the entire process filmed to prove that what he does isn’t real. So with director/producer Iris and her cameraman Daniel in tow, they head to the back country of Louisiana to help a teenage girl named Nell.

Nell is a sweet young teenager who lives with her father and brother out on a secluded farm. The father, Louis Sweetzer, has kept his children at home and away from town since their mother died. Louis wrote to Cotton asking for help after some of his livestock is killed and Nell is found covered in blood and unable to remember what had happened.  After assessing the situation and confirming that Nell is possessed by a demon named Abalam, Cotton rigs Nell’s room with various tricks and effects that he’ll use during the fake exorcism. During the ritual itself, the bed begins to shake and Nell lies on top of it and a speaker programmed with over 800 demon sounds is heard. Afterwards, Cotton declares that Nell has been freed from her possession and leaves with his payment. Later that night while staying at a motel in town, Cotton finds Nell awake but in a trance in his room. As they try to figure out what really is going on, Cotton discovers the dark truth and a reason to find faith one last time. 

Favorite moment – A possessed Nell takes Daniel’s camera , and after beating a cat to death in the barn, is standing over Cotton while he is sleeping, about to bludgeon him to death as well.