Photo by PATTI PERRET, FALLEN ANGEL PROD. LLC
The Last Exorcism Part II (No Rating)
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The Last Exorcism Part II
Continuing where the first film left off, Nell Sweetzer (Ashley Bell) is found terrified and alone in rural Louisiana. Back in the relative safety of ...
Rating: PG-13 for horror violence, terror and brief language
Length: 88 minutes
Released: March 1, 2013 Nationwide
Cast: Andrew Sensenig, Ashley Bell, Spencer Treat Clark, Judd Lormand, Julia Garner
Director: Ed Gass-Donnelly
Writer: Ed Gass-Donnelly, Damien Chazelle
More info and showtimes »
OK, so it wasn’t “The Last Exorcism” after all. Here’s “Part II,” an 88-minute bore without the nervy, shaky-camera found-footage conceit, without the doubting exorcist’s moment of truth, without the chills of demonic possession thrills that the low-budget original film served up.
“Part II” is every bit as cheap and far more generic, nothing more than a run of the mill ghost story masquerading as “The Devil Made Her Do It.”
Ashley Bell, as Nell, the teen lusted after by Lucifer, seems exhausted, frazzled, out of her acting league and nowhere near her teen years in this sequel. Nell has stumbled into New Orleans, hounded during Mardi Gras even as she tries to convince doctors and those in a mental health halfway house that “I’m not crazy.”
But she’s seeing her dead daddy (Louis Herthum). She’s hearing voices.
Dogs bark at her passing, gorillas in the zoo act up. And every Mardi Gras reveler in a scary mask stares her down. Frank (Muse Watson), who runs Deveroux Halfway House, could not be more wrong when he assures her, “Whatever you’re running from won’t find you here.”
“Last Exorcism II” is a slower than slow thriller built around Bell, who isn’t at her most subtle or empathetic here. There’s fear and the burden of “If he seduces you, all hope is lost.” Not that Bell gets that across. There’s no urgency to the performance, or that of anybody else trying to save poor Nell from Hell.
It’s a film of cheap shriek scares and fizzing frights that pack no punch. The tropes of the genre — exorcists who have the tools but face long odds, bleeding walls, birds that fly into a house where Nell hides out (hey, it was ALIENS who caused that in “Dark Skies”) — are there. But the effects are skimpy and cheesy, with that crazy contortion business that the first “Last Exorcist” took to new extremes rarely used.
Filmmaker Ed Gass-Donnelly sets too much of the action in broad daylight, which isn’t spooky. The dull acting doesn’t hide that there’s not enough story to justify setting this in Voodooville, USA — New Orleans.
So one can only hope that when the say “The Last Exorcism,” that they mean it.
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THE LAST EXORCISM PART II
1 star (Grade: D-minus)
Cast: Ashley Bell, Julia Garner, Louis Herthum
Directed by Ed Gass-Donnelly, written by Damien Chazelle and Ed Gass-Donnelly. A CBS Films release.
Running time: 1:28
MPAA rating: PG-13 for horror violence, terror and brief language
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©2013 McClatchy-Tribune News Service
Distributed by MCT Information Services
© 2013 Knoxville.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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