September 7, 2011

Exorcismus (2010)

(AKA The Possession of Emma Evans)



"A family allows their young daughter's exorcism to be recorded secretly."

Everybody calls this a Spanish horror movie due to the nationality of the director, writer and production company but as far as most viewers will be concerned, it's British. Ninety percent of the actors are British and the dialogue is in English so it's not exactly a typical Spanish film at all. It even has Doug "Pinhead" Bradley in it for all of five minutes.

Far more important than any of that though is that "Exorcismus" isn't very good. I've never been the biggest fan of "[REC]" (or its sequel and remake) but anyone expecting this to have some quality to it simply because it's by the same producers will be even more disappointed.

The biggest problem is that "Exorcismus" is just another in a long line of generic exorcism movies with nothing that really makes it stand out apart from a minor twist near the end. It's not even really a twist as such either but you'll see what I mean if you are ever unlucky enough to make it that far through the film to care.


It's not even worth getting into any of the technical details about the film as the acting is sort of nondescript, occasionally wooden, and just there. Nobody stands out, none of the characters are very engaging, and it's all just quite bland and flat. If you think of a really bad British horror TV show such as something that Channel Four might show really late at night when they hope that nobody is watching, this is about the same quality. Actually, it's a little bit worse because it takes itself completely seriously.

The camerawork is dreadful. It's a mixture of constantly moving handheld and POV shots but this isn't a "found footage" film that would even benefit from those techniques. I advise having a couple of doses of whatever you usually take for a headache handy if you do decide to watch this as you are bound to get one.

It's also very bright and clean looking to the point of being ridiculously so. A lot more gloominess might have given "Exorcismus" some atmosphere as it doesn't have any.

There are no scares or suspense but there are some unintentionally funny moments due to the ineptness of it all. At one point the possessed girl seems to be channelling Dawn French's parody of Regan from "The Exorcist".

Of course, this is going straight into "The Dungeon". It's derivative, predictable and clichéd. Even worse, it's also really rather boring with it.

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