Excision (2012)

"A disturbed and delusional high school student with aspirations of a career in medicine goes to extremes to earn the approval of her controlling mother."

Starring AnnaLynne McCord (from "Nip/Tuck"), Roger Bart (from "Desperate Housewives"), Ariel Winter (from "One Missed Call"), Traci Lords, Malcolm McDowell, and Matthew Gray Gubler (the guy with the exceedingly long neck from "Criminal Minds"), "Excision" isn't really a horror movie, but I was asked to take a look at it and briefly review it for somebody on another site that I occasionally hang out on.

If you like slow-moving, offbeat, highschool/coming of age dramas with lots of blood and gore in dream sequences then "Excision" will make you very happy indeed. There are bucket loads of blood in this, several mouthfuls of vomit, and some particularly revolting teenage acne. Even herpes makes a guest appearance. For me, however, "Excision" seems to take all day to get to the point. Apart from the practical effects, I'm not overly impressed by any of it.

The acting is fine, there are no problems with the camerawork or any of the other production values, but for obvious reasons, "Excision" looks and feels just like an episode of "Nip/Tuck", "American Horror Story" or "Desperate Housewives". It tries to be all sexy, controversial and outrageous, but just like on TV, many punches are pulled, and it's far too long despite the running time being only an hour and 20 minutes.

The main problem with any "horror" movie which isn't really a horror movie until the very end is how much is put in to prepare you for the final reveal. In this case, "Excision" shows all the gory bits right from the very beginning, and this ruins the shock value of the ending. Even for the squeamish, this technique is anaesthetising and predictable.

Although it's still quite insane, less dark comedy and an even more "out of left field" punchline could have turned "Excision" into a really good story instead of a cult wannabe. The same thing almost happens with "Teeth" except that the similar vibe and over-extended gag plays out better. It's definitely not a good idea to watch the two back-to-back if you are looking for originality.

As a quick cash grab, there are the usual suspects involved in this including Malcolm McDowell phoning-in another performance as a snarky British maths teacher. Traci Lords does a nice impersonation of Bree from "Desperate Housewives" while, ironically, Roger Bart is slightly more endearing than usual. I can't really fault Roger Bart in anything except "Hostel 2" though. Unfortunately, not one member of the cast is outstanding because "Excision" spends too much time lingering over the gloriously bloody effects rather than the superficial characterisation. There's simply nobody in this to care about.

I absolutely loathed AnnaLynne McCord when she played Eden in "Nip/Tuck" and was extremely happy when she was written out. Pauline, her character in "Excision", is equally vile, distancing, and unsympathetic plus she looks sicker than her onscreen sister (Ariel Winter) who is supposed to have cystic fibrosis. As soon as I saw her "ugly" make-up and fake pimples, I had no interest in seeing any more of her. Apart from showing some skin, she's very "TV" acting-wise and just isn't convincing as an angsty teenager now either.

I wish I had something more positive to say about "Excision" because there's definitely something good underneath. The trouble is that it has to struggle so much to be seen through the mediocre execution of everything else. If you are less critical than me, you will probably love it in spite of the flaws.

I'm rating "Excision" as below average. Numerically, I'd give it a 4 out of 10 if I was still doing things that way. It's a good idea, entertaining enough, nicely produced, but too quirky, far-fetched and unsatisfying. At the end of the day, "Excision" is Richard Bates Jr.'s directorial debut. He had four years to develop this from his short of the same name, but I won't hold that against him.

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.