Exorcism - from 101 Films

“Whatever Possessed You?”

Remember that film from the seventies, The Exorcist? Yeah, the one with the vomit and the spinning head and the soundtrack that, if you were completely honest with yourself, had you reaching for a clean pair of underpants. That film is now over forty years old and still filmmakers are trying to emulate its success. This found-footage film from Lance Patrick will not have you reaching for new underpants, but may make you vomit…and your head spin.

A group of actors and crew journey to an isolated house that is rumoured to have a ghastly and gruesome past. Some say it was the location of an exorcism that turned awry (do they ever go as planned?), with an evil spirit still lurking in the shadows. The perfect setting, then, for a horror film about an exorcism.

As the ensemble attempt to shoot their exorcism story, strange happenings disrupt the filming - like peculiar noises, slashed wrists and actor’s dialogue turning into beastly, and foul-mouthed, growls. Will any of these doomed creative types make it out alive? Let’s hope not.

The film within a film method is always slightly irksome, allowing poor actors to blame their limited range on a “resemblance” to reality. None of this film’s cast are believable - from the egomaniacal director Rob (Alex Rendall), whose ranting and raving will have you rooting for the murderous spirit, to the make-up girl Jo (Sarah Akehurst) who is as wooden as a church pew. All captured by the “behind-the-scenes” cameraman who fails to step in when his friends are obviously experiencing some otherworldly trauma, instead he just carries on filming.

Found-footage has long been the thorn in the horror genre’s paw, missing the mark with so many stories by simply trying to adhere to inane rules that try and scare up online commotion about “true events”. Ironically enough it is the online community who tear these films apart; ridiculing them for goofs and continuity errors whilst cynically dismissing every aspect of the film company’s so-called “unearthing” of footage “captured” by missing “people” (who are on IMDb).

This begs the question that in 2015, why are films still emerging with this contrived basis? Whatever possessed them to make, and release, this movie? The glut of found-footage that is out there is more than enough to drown the purists who cannot seem to get past how “awesome” The Blair Witch Project was. Why add to it?

Perhaps in forty years time, when film buffs are wading through the decades of films looking for a genuinely brilliant horror film about exorcisms they will find one…The Exorcist from 1973.


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