Directed by Ed Gass-Donnelly, “The Last Exorcism Part II,” is the sequel to the fairly successful “The Last Exorcism.” Unfortunately, unlike the first, the second is disappointing. Even the most forgiving of horror fans will find it hard to really enjoy this poorly made film.
The movie picks up immediately following the first “Last Exorcism,” and to add to the confusion of having two last exorcisms, viewers will be expected to assume that somehow the main character, Nell (Ashley Bell, “The Last Exorcism”) survived the first. The movie begins with her entering a house down the road from where “The Last Exorcism” left off. She is taken into a hospital in New Orleans from there and ends up in an all-female safe house.
The rest of the movie revolves around Nell trying to escape the demon that has come back for her. As exciting as one would think a demon chasing after someone would be, the movie is mediocre and tedious.
Scene after scene is filled with flashbacks to the first movie, as well as random still shots of objects. The film also offers many, many random character entries that offer little depth and add absolutely nothing to the movie other than confusion. The main examples of these random entries are Nell’s new love interest, Chris (Spencer Treat Clark, “The Last House on the Left”) and the entrance of a psychic, Cecile (Tarra Riggs, “Treme”). In both cases, the characters seem unrealistically involved in Nell’s life considering it happened within a matter of seconds of meeting each other.
Then to top this issue off, the acting within the movie comes with so many failures, both Riggs and Clark’s characters seem fake and pushed. This creates huge setbacks in the movie that make the film so unbelievable because both character’s emotions are hardly passable as real.
Perhaps one of the only good things about “The Last Exorcism Part II” is Bell. Where there are so many failures in the acting, she is a gem. Unlike the others, everything she does sounds and feels real. Bell is convincingly crazy and plays the role of a possessed psycho almost too well.
One other entertaining factor within the movie is the buildup of suspense. The film offers many suspenseful moments. While this is entertaining to follow, viewers will be disappointed, as each scene ends with emptiness and poor excuses for scares. In fact, the movie’s scariest moments are actually within the flashbacks to the first “Last Exorcism.”
In all actuality, “The Last Exorcism Part II,” could probably have passed as an average to mediocre horror film, but once the final scene begins, all hope for the movie is lost with an extremely inauthentic and cheesy ending, filled with special effects of random props lighting on fire. The movie will most definitely let even the genre’s biggest fans down. It is a snooze-fest filled with disappointing suspense, poor acting, and cheap effects; all built off of still shot scenes of random objects and flashbacks.
