THE LAST EXORCISM PART II (2013)

Studio:       CBS Films
Director:    Ed Gass-Donnelly
Writer:       Damien Chazelle, Ed Gass-Donnelly
Producer:  Eric Newman, Eli Roth, Marc Abraham, Thomas A. Bliss
Stars:     Ashley Bell, Julia Garner, Spencer Treat Clark, David Jensen, Tarra Riggs, Louis Herthum, Muse Watson

Review Score: 

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Summary:

Having survived her ordeal in the woods, Nell Sweetzer struggles for a return to normalcy while being haunted by the demon Abalam. 

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

A man presumes that his wife is sleeping beside him until he sees her in the bathroom doorway. Wondering what is under the bed sheets with him, the man is bitten before hurriedly retreating into the bathroom with his wife. The couple cautiously opens the door and searches their upturned home. Nell Sweetzer is discovered perched on their kitchen counter, covered in blood.

After a doctor’s examination, a nurse takes a lock of Nell’s hair while giving the girl a sponge bath. Nell wakes suddenly from her trance and screams, “he’ll kill us all!” Nell is placed in a transitional home for girls in New Orleans operated by Frank Merle. Frank returns Nell’s cross necklace to her. Nell meets her roommate Gwen and later befriends two other girls. She also takes a job as a hotel housekeeper.

While out with her friends, Nell flirts with Chris, who also works at the hotel. As the girls enjoy Mardi Gras, men in carnival masks stare at Nell from a distance, including a street performer pretending to be a statue. Nell thinks she sees her father looking at her from across the street. She has a strange dream that night and when Nell wakes, one of the girls in the home goes into convulsions and foams at the mouth.

While vacuuming a hotel room, Nell believes that she hears the radio talking to her. She and Chris go the zoo together after work and she tells Chris about her baby. That night, Nell receives a phone call. On the other end is a baby crying and a series of strange voices. The phone continues to ring once she hangs up, even after unplugging it from the wall. Nell has a vision of her father again during the night.

Chris and Nell share a kiss at work. Nell then listens to the sounds of sex coming from an adjacent hotel room. While her ear is pressed against the wall, cracks begin to form on the wall as well as on Nell’s skin. Back at home, Nell sees Chris come to her window at night. She goes outside to meet him but hears only a voice that says, “we’re not Chris.” Nell runs back inside and meets her father. Her father asks for forgiveness as he prepares to shoot Nell with a shotgun, claiming that it is the only way to save her. Gwen knocks out Nell’s father from behind. Gwen’s eyes turn black as the door closes on Nell. Frank comes downstairs to check on the commotion, but the room is now suddenly empty. Frank worries about Nell relapsing. As she sleeps, Nell levitates off her bed.

Nell learns about her past when she finds the other girls watching YouTube video footage of her past exorcism. The video is titled “Crazy possessed girl in woods” and was posted by “TheReverend.” Frank tries telling Nell to find her own identity. Nell goes to pray at a church. The pastor sits with Nell but his words turn sinister. Birds begin killing themselves by flying against the stained glass windows. Outside, Nell is accosted by a tourist who wants a picture with her. In the picture, his face is scrambled. After she shrugs him off, the man goes into convulsions.

A woman named Cecile rescues Nell from the scene. Cecile claims to be from “The Order of the Right Hand,” a group that has been watching over Nell and protecting her. Cecile tries to see into Nell through a séance, but Nell explains that doing so would be dangerous for the medium. Cecile then warns Nell about Chris. Nell goes to Chris’ home. When she finds him, Chris gives her a message before slitting his own throat in front of Nell.

Nell returns to Cecile’s. Men named Calder and Jeffrey arrive to perform an exorcism. Nell is strapped to a table and the word “Croatoa” is painted on her stomach. Jeffrey lays down a salt circle around the group. Calder plans to bind Abalam to a chicken and then kill the demon. When they realize that the demon is too strong for the exorcism to be successful, Calder injects Nell’s IV with a lethal dose of morphine. Killing Nell is their last resort for destroying the demon. Abalam appears to Nell as a reflection of herself. Her spirit joins hands with her doppelganger as her only means of survival.

Calder is thrown out a top floor window of the house. Blood then splatters against a first floor window. Nell exits Cecile’s home calmly as the house begins crumbling. Nell returns to Frank’s house. She kills Frank and sets the house on fire. Nell leaves in Frank’s car. As she drives down the road, fires begin to burn along the sidewalks and inside of the vehicles that pass by.

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Review:

Realizing that only one exorcism can be the last, the sequel’s title sandwiches the word “Part” before its Roman numeral, technically making it an extension of “The Last Exorcism,” rather than a separate one altogether.  Although “The Last Exorcism Part II” is very much a film of its own that shares a character set with its predecessor, and not much else.

“The Last Exorcism” (review here) had a number of things going for it that made it stand out in the “found footage” genre.  Particularly memorable was an ambiguous ending that maddened some and delighted others.  Following a failed exorcism from a charlatan preacher, naïve farm girl Nell Sweetzer was left possessed with a demon baby.  The film climaxed with a cult ceremony that was intended either to purge the evil entity or to facilitate its entry into the world.  Various characters switched allegiances, ran towards a raging bonfire, or turned tail towards the woods.  When the credits rolled, there was more than one way to interpret the events that had just been witnessed.

Shedding the “found footage” format is no big deal.  Giving a canonical explanation for the first film’s ending is a more questionable action, even though that explanation is almost as vague.  “The Last Exorcism Part II” begins with the video camera on the forest floor.  One thing left unexplained is exactly how Nell survived, but somehow she did, presumably with some demonic assistance.  Nell is then placed in a halfway house for girls and tries to go about putting some semblance of normalcy back into her life.  But the demon Abalam still has a very powerful connection to her.

Whether or not that summary in the previous paragraph constitutes a story, it is what passes for one in “The Last Exorcism Part II.”  Nell is clearly the star of the sequel, but Reverend Cotton Marcus led the first film.  (In fact, the original working title of “The Last Exorcism” was “Cotton.”)  “The Last Exorcism” was less about twisting heads and more about Cotton’s arc through a look at his family life and his evolving faith as events unraveled.  The character study was a welcome surprise for a “found footage” horror film.  It was also an edge that the movie used well to sustain interest in an otherwise rote tale of demonic possession.

Removing the best character for the sequel to focus on the first film’s secondary star is not a sin, but “Part II” does not even qualify as an intimate look at Nell.  Nell is pretty much the same person she was when audiences met her the first time.  A sweet, innocent country kid with a kind heart and a proclivity for unwittingly harboring devils in her body.  Surrounding her are even thinner characters.  Only one of the girls staying with Nell in the halfway house is given a name.  The rest are so nondescript that the movie does not even bother assigning anyone else an identity.

This is what makes “The Last Exorcism Part II” so hollow.  The story, such as there is one, can only go one of two ways.  Either Nell is going to be possessed again, or the demon will be defeated.  There is nothing more to the plot than that and filling in the blanks with empty characters only emphasizes that fact.  Many scenes are completely devoid of dialogue, as the central focus of the film is on creating mood above all else.

What the movie then becomes is a series of slowly timed vignettes that barely connect to one another.  Dogs bark, pictures fall off walls, and loud thumps provide every chill there is by way of noisy jump scares.  They are plentiful and they are occasionally effective too, but it is only an audio induced thrill.  None of the movie’s actual meat offers a lasting impression.  And the less said about the final scene, the better.

The script is a disappointment, but there is admittedly some limited appeal to the film overall.  The cinematography makes for a crisp looking film.  Even though the jump scares are empty, they can pull a rise out of even the sleepiest viewer.  And for once, a horror film exorcism is not based on Roman Catholic mythology featuring Latin phrases and splashing holy water.  Credit is due for creating an interesting scene involving salt circles, possessed chickens, and the word “Croatoa” written on Nell’s belly, even if that last one makes little sense.

“Found footage” is exchanged for a traditional narrative.  Cotton passes the torch to Nell.  Practical FX make way for the digital variety.  In an effort to create its own identity, “The Last Exorcism Part II” shelves everything that made the original uniquely entertaining and ends up being a movie that falls short of the first film’s bar.  Although if undoing the ending of its predecessor becomes a tradition for this franchise, then that leaves at least one good reason to look forward to a Part III.

Review Score:  55

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