Review: http://www.worldofkj.com/article.php?i=585

David, you hated a movie!

I hated fourteen movies last year! I have so much hate to share.

I love how so much of the ad campaign centers on the throwaway split-second shot of the nun with cataracts.

One of the worst movies I've ever seen. Everyone booed at the ending. EVERYONE. F

I didn't think the entire movie was bad, actually. It didn't bring anything new to the table, but that was pretty much expected. It was kinda okay...

But that ending.

It's just as bad as you think. I'm shocked that the filmmakers actually even went through with that. It's like they just ran out of ideas once they left the hospital and just decided to end it.

Funny thing is, I don't think audiences would hate the ending if the text wasn't there. It certainly wasn't any more sudden than Paranormal Activity 3. Just end with the mangled car and go to credits. No more boo birds.

Kind of a frustrating movie, as it had two ideas I really liked. A lead who'd had an abortion? Wonderful fodder for a demon, but the flick never does anything with it. And drowning a baby at a baptism would be a brilliant scene for a good director in a pitch black horror film... instead, it's wasted here.

Really, it's just very boring. None of the characters stand out. And much of it is silly. This is supposed to be a 'professional documentarian,' so why is every interview shaky? I never bought into the found footage angle of this. In the psych room, we keep getting hand-held close-ups of Rossi's mother, yet in the security cam footage there's nobody in the room but the two women. Stuff like that makes the whole concept impossible to swallow.

I thought they could have done more with the implications of the scene where we see the mother has a drawing of the "in happier times" photo the lead carries around. They didn't play around enough with the mother's inner conflict, 20 years spent sharing a body and a mind with demons. She was just a source of jump scenes and creepiness.

They also did a very poor job conveying the multiple possessions. It more or less played as if the American priest was the only one possessed, but I'm fairly certain she and the Brit were, too. Was the cameraman?

Oh, and supposedly the business with the uncle (what God won't forgive the Brit priest for doing) is he helped his terminal uncle die. I read this was revealed in an interview. This could have been interesting or even poignant.

Eh, I don't think Paranormal 3's ending (aka The Last Exorcism's ending) is as abrupt as this. At least in both of those films, it kinda takes an unexpected turn, but something happens. Shit goes down.

In this? They escape with Isabella from the hospital and are driving as if they're about to do another exorcism or something. And then BAM. Car crash. Finished. Followed by something along the lines of "no one knows what happened to her." It's just nothing.

Agreed. The problem with this ending is it completely sets up a major, climactic, multi-person exorcism--which could be cool--and then, slam, the end.

It didn't help it moved so slowly for the first hour. Everything engaging was crowded into the final ten, fifteen minutes.

I didn't think it was engaging. I was laughing all through the hospital stuff, certainly. And there were some awesomely bad lines. When discussing why priest might try to drown baby at baptism: "Well, he's been under a lot of stress lately!"

Engaging was maybe too strong a word. There was activity (blood, people running, loud noises) rather than interminable stretches of ponderous, dreary, inane dialogue.

I wanted to die during those "Why did you join the priesthood? Can science and faith co-exist?" scenes.

Paranormal Activity movies use their slow-burn first acts to build a nice, simmering tension. This movie just weirdly shifted gears.

Yeah, that's true. PA starts slow but build and builds. This started slow, got a little bigger, then stopped. (And that's ignoring that PA actually tries to get you to like the people, whereas I couldn't tell you these people's names.)

I wish I had timed this movie with a watch. I'm convinced the film itself is around 65 minutes long. Those end credits, what I saw of them, moved SO slowly. I'm sure they lasted a solid 8-11 minutes at such a snail's pace.

Oh, and after The Devil Inside, killer spider moon rocks don't seem quite as lame.

Without a doubt a publicity stunt. There's not a scare to be had here.

http://www.therossifiles.com/site/

be part of the ongoing investigation..........??????

Shit. It reads like they expect Us to write the climax to the movie.
Uncertainty is the intent, I'm sure, but uncertainty demands a continuation of menace of which I am frankly short of supplying for myself atm...

Of course I suppose I could consider supplying a bit of menace to anyone else who may need it to complete their moviegoing experience...give me a shout and I'll see what I can do for 'ya...

Perhaps I'm being too generous, but I'm only upset with the film if there aren't any more. It could have said "to be continued..." and maybe people wouldn't be so upset. If that truly is the end then it's horrible, and I think that's the sense that people got - that maybe it's only continued on the internet or something, and that really would be unacceptable.

When the end of a horror movie is that the horror is still there, it only works if you can at least think that the horror won. In this, there is no sense of that. It's the worst of both worlds - maybe good won, maybe evil won, there's zero way to know without seeing what happens next.

The film put a lot on the table - and I think people really do want to know what happens next, because it's a very competent film for this genre, but the Cinemascore proves that you must not make a film where you imply that people will need to supply their own ending unless this film makes enough money to keep it going - this is what is discussed variously in other posts above. That does seem to be what pissed people off about it.

Its like they ran out of film, space or whatever they use this days and decided to end the movie in the most "climactic part" and we got no answers other than the mother has 4 devils inside, theyre badasses and that Isabella girl is a bad actress..

The film wasn't really that bad....

But the ending? for fuck's sake you pay to see a movie that has 3 acts not just 2 acts and a half.

That's what pissed me off, not because the film was bad, it was not (it was at least... waayyy better than any of the Paranormal activity shit series) but cuz of THAT ending...

The ending of this makes The Last Exorcism0s ending look epic

They really should have explained that. I was thinking maybe his priest uncle molested him or something .


An early contender for worst movie of the year. As I'm sure everyone has already heard the ending is awful, but that's definitely not the only reason this movie is bad. Its biggest offense is that it's boring and lacks any real suspense or scares. The ending is just the final nail in the coffin. I mean, it's just starting to get remotely interesting and then it's over. It's like they had to wrap up filming and didn't have time to finish it, or they just didn't know where to go with it so they ended it. And the text on the screen telling you to go to a website for more info makes it even worse. I was personally glad it was over though. So thankful I waited to see this when it hit Blu-ray and wasn't suckered into seeing it theatrically. I've got to hand it to Paramount. They did a very nice job marketing this. I did think it looked good from the ads but the toxic word-of-mouth from moviegoers made me re-think seeing it on the big screen.

D