The Last Exorcism: Critic Reviews

It's about the dark side of piety -- the cultish wrath that can emerge out of the high and the mighty. At the center of it all, once again, is a teenage girl's gnashing wrath.

An unusually restrained and genuinely eerie little movie perched at the intersection of faith, folklore and female puberty.

Stamm effectively crafts a dozen or so marvellously creepy moments. Audience faith in the existence of decent horror films is reaffirmed.

Satan gets behind The Last Exorcism in a fiendishly clever plot that starts out creepily enthralling, then collapses in a heap.

Stamm creates an anxious psychological horror that's vaguely familiar yet refreshingly original.

It's like director Daniel Stamm and his crew realized they were treading awfully close to making a film with real depth and edge that horror audiences might hate, and they just couldn't pull the trigger.

With 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.

That this comes via minimal special effects is admirable, but the movie also cheats a bit: Tinkly piano music is layered onto the spooky moments, which kills the faux-doc "realism.

The only thing finally astonishing about The Last Exorcism is its goofiness.

In its eagerness to deliver familiar genre pleasures, it somehow misplaces its soul.

The Last Exorcism pulls off its sweetly scary magic trick with great style and panache.

It's difficult to find an ending for horror movies. Often the getting there is the fun. That's especially true here.

The 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.

The Last Exorcism is fueled by the arrogance of its smarmy outsider, the expert who knows everything except what an ass he is.

A modestly chilling, drawn out affair in which the characters and possible "scientific explanations" are more interesting than its predictable final destination.

A tense and generally understated chiller that might creep you right the hell out.

A creepy, smartly written and very entertaining low-budget chiller.

The pseudo-documentary premise is paper-thin at the outset and wears out long before Botko and Gurland's script lurches toward the dumbest and least plausible solution to the mystery.

The cast is effective, with everyone sliding believably into their roles.

Self-possessed performances elevate this creepy but half-cocked faux-doc.

The Last Exorcism is one of the scariest movies to come along in a long time -- until the last five minutes or so, when it completely falls apart.

A man very much of these times, Cotton is that rarity in the horror genre: a genuinely intriguing character.

It's not just the hand-held camera that will shake you up. The Last Exorcism gives you good reason to be very afraid of the dark.

The Last Exorcism stirs up a caldron of handheld-camera technique, faith-challenged drama and solid acting for a suitably squirmy tale of demonic possession.

A fairly absorbing pseudo-documentary demonic-possession flick with all the bodily contortions and jittery camerawork you'd expect.