The closing feature of the 11th edition of the London Frightfest was The Last Exorcism by Daniel Stamm, a film produced and promoted by big time horror icon Eli Roth.
The whole cast of the movie was at the Empire Cinema for the European Premiere and Eli Roth was also there trying to convince the audience to believe in this new project and to present everyone of the unknown cast, above all first time German director Daniel Stamm, who looked kind of like a puppet in Eli’s hands. Protagonists Patrick Fabian, Ashley Bell and Iris Bahr were really excited to be there at Frightfest and were talking great things about the making of the film, the troubles and the challenges of the shooting, and about the fantastic chemistry between them.
Despite the overwhelming excitement, The Last Exorcism failed to impress and the overall thought was that there was really nothing original about it. It was a mixture of a few different movies, from The Blair Witch Project to Rec, from Rosemary’s Baby to The Exorcist, from The Exorcism of Emily Rose to Paranormal Activity, and it did not bring anything innovative and out of the ordinary. It was supposed to be a mockumentary about a priest’s last exorcism – with a shake handy cam and a questionably on screen editing – but the dialogues sounded too much like they were coming from a script and the final twist appeared to be a little stretched and unnecessarily ambiguous.
It was not scary, it was not terrifying, it was not thrilling. And that is not what you expect from Eli Roth, the man behind Cabin Fever and Hostel. The protagonists, Ashley Bell and Patrick Fabian, said Eli was always showing up on set or in the editing room and telling everyone to make it scarier. Probably no one paid attention.
If the movie earns big money is because the “weight” of his persona in the system and his work behind the scenes are undoubtedly effective for the selling. The marketing strategy is also pushing heavily The Last Exorcism as the next big thing, but after having spent five days watching horror movies at Frightfest, I can definitely say that other films deserve more to be seen and to be promoted than The Last Exorcism.
