Evangelical pastor Cotton Marcus has agreed to allow filmmaker Iris Reisen and the cameraman Daniel Moskowitz to make a film about his life as a pastor who does the odd exorcism. However he is on the verge of losing his faith and he doesn't really beli
The Last Exorcism
Director: Daniel Stamm
Rialto Cinemas
Evangelical pastor Cotton Marcus has agreed to allow filmmaker Iris Reisen and the cameraman Daniel Moskowitz to make a film about his life as a pastor who does the odd exorcism. However he is on the verge of losing his faith and he doesn’t really believe in exorcism.
He even admits that his own exorcisms are frauds and he makes use of old style trickery as well as modern age electronic gimmicks to fool his subjects as well as their friends and parents into believing he has got rid of the devil.
He contends that doing that helps people keep their belief in god and no harm is done with his manipulation of the truth.
In the middle of filming he gets a call from a distraught farmer, Louis Sweetzer who wants an exorcism performed on his daughter Nell.
Marcus performs the exorcism using all his tricks and everything seems to settle down until Nell starts doing things which aren’t part of the set up.
We slowly start to realise that this is a really dysfunctional family and that the caring father may be the source of Nell’s problems. Then there is the creepy son who is learning to be as brain dead as his father.
Just as we get to think that this is really a film about pedophilia and abuse the camera crew suddenly find themselves in the midst of some disturbing local devil worship.
The film manages the reality, doco style pretty well, only occasionally appearing to be observers on their own shoot.
It manages to mix horror, social realism and observations about the dangers of religious fervour in a tight, scary package.
