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100It's scary fun and packed with comic bits that skate between sad and absurd like the best of reality TV.
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80The method is well-worn and the subject-matter familiar, but this is a smart, scary little picture.
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78The shock ending isn't all that shocking if you're a fan of genre films, but it's nonetheless effective despite the fact that it sidesteps several key questions. Never mind: It's hellishly fun.
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75For a movie made from spare parts - take "The Exorcist" and attach to "The Blair Witch Project" and "Paranormal Activity" - The Last Exorcism delivers the heebie-jeebie goods.
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A superbly creepy story.
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75Satan is optional in The Last Exorcism. This is the rare horror film that would have been entertaining even if nothing scary happened.
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Stamm creates an anxious psychological horror that's vaguely familiar yet refreshingly original.
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75A creepy, smartly written and very entertaining low-budget chiller.
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75Directed by someone you've never heard of and starring actors you won't be able to place, there's only one reason for a movie such as the locally shot Last Exorcism to exist: to scare the bejeezus out of you.
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75For a while, The Last Exorcism shrewdly exploits our voyeurism, as it sustains the teasing question of whether there's actually anything supernatural going on. The payoff, however, isn't scary enough.
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75I cared enough about these characters to follow "Exorcism" to tense and occasionally goofy places, even if the setup proved a bit stronger than the payoff.
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75Aided by strong performances from Bell and Fabian, Stamm deftly plays with the boundary of fact and fiction, though his game might have worked better with a little more grounding in verisimilitude.
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70The Last Exorcism is a good movie that could have been - SHOULD have been - a great one.
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70With a small, well-chosen cast, sly script, and slippery, ambivalent characters, The Last Exorcism gives a welcome titty-twist to the demonic-possession movie revival.
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70As with many well-intentioned scare flicks, the wrapping-up feels dissipated and obvious, but for a good while The Last Exorcism makes for an atmospheric, character-rich stab at movie fright.
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70An unusually restrained and genuinely eerie little movie perched at the intersection of faith, folklore and female puberty.
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70Cotton is that rarity in the horror genre: a genuinely intriguing character.
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70The Last Exorcism makes first-rate use of religious doubt and religious extremism to concoct a novel horror-thriller clever enough to seduce unbelievers while satisfying the bloodlust of its congregation/fanbase.
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67The rural atmosphere is well wrought and so is the depiction of phony evangelism – but it all devolves into the usual heebie-jeebies by the end.
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65Manages to be scary without resorting to cheap special effects or gore. It's not as good as it could have been, but it's so much better than expected.
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63One of the pleasures of films about being stuck in a place -- "The Wicker Man" is maybe the best example -- comes from the skill with which the writers keep their protagonist locked in his box. On this test, The Last Exorcism pretty much flunks.
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63This supernatural yarn is thoroughly engrossing until it loses its way about three-quarters in. It's as if the filmmakers didn't know how to resolve the mayhem, opting for silly over diabolical.
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63The Last Exorcism is one of those rare films where the marketing campaign is more interesting than the film it publicizes.
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60A smart horror film will fatten its pigs before the slaughter, and the mock doc The Last Exorcism feeds its prize hog nicely.
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50A backwoods psychological thriller delivered faux-documentary-style, with mixed results.
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50The more hellish the story gets, the sillier and less involving the movie becomes.
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50There may once have been a good and a bad film fighting for the soul of The Last Exorcism, but in its final moments, cinema's dark forces triumph emphatically.
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50Its grisly violence and ridicule-religion tone make it sort of the anti-"Exorcism of Emily Rose."
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50So some good acting and decent scares get entombed within too many dull postmodern iterations.
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Patrick Fabian is charming as Marcus, and director Daniel Stamm delivers a series of surefooted scares as the staged possession turns real. But the movie is still unsatisfying; in its eagerness to deliver familiar genre pleasures, it somehow misplaces its soul.
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20The Last Exorcism trods on previously stomped ground and has almost no good jump-outta-your-seat moments.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 29 out of 49
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Mixed: 6 out of 49
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Negative: 14 out of 49
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