The Last Exorcism and the Religious Fantastics

The film The Last Exorcism follows Rev. Cotton Sweetzer, a preacher more devoted to theatrics than faith, as he performs an “exorcism” of Nell Sweetzer, daughter of farmer Louis Sweetzer. The original goal of the “documentary” is to show the deceptive nature of the practices of Cotton in order to expose what Cotton believed to be a dangerous business. The Sweetzer case appears to be a normal case, with aspects common to most the cases Cotton has encountered. After the performance of Cotton’s “exorcism,” Nell appears in Cotton’s motel room and the spiral downward for the battle with the devil truly begins.

I found this film had all the elements to be a great addition into the “hand cam” genre of horror, but there were a few elements that were completely off. In a movie culture that has epics such as The Exorcist and Paranormal Activity, it is very important for films that touch on exorcism to be unique in some way. I can tell that Last Exorcism attempted to do this, with what I believe is a failure. Upon the completion of viewing this film, I realized that Last Exorcism would be more appropriately grouped in with Rosemary’s Baby or Lost Souls than with The Exorcist and Paranormal Activity. While I would welcome this twist normally, this film is billed as an exorcism. I understand that the girl is “possessed” and we do encounter a demon through the body of Nell, but the main idea here I believe is completely understated. Nell is not a victim of the devil, but a victim of worshippers. But perhaps that is what the filmmakers were aiming for.

Another aspect of this film that could be seen as a positive, and I usually would agree, would be the lack of special effects. Nell, performed expertly by Ashley Bell, has a few body-twisting moments where we are meant to think “Oh, she’s possessed because people can’t do that!” I was instead thinking, they couldn’t get someone with more background in body manipulation to do this part? Not to say that Ashley Bell didn’t perform well, but I know that I’ve seen better. Also, tiny bits of special effects will never hurt a film, they can only improve it. I said TINY. This film’s elements of terror are completely hinged on the abilities of Ashley Bell as Nell and lighting. A few additions of Hollywood’s smoke and mirrors would have been greatly appreciated here. Cotton is willing to expose his smoke and mirrors, but we as moviegoers can accept that smoke and mirrors are going to be utilized.

As this is the first post of the blog, I’ll explain a little about what is going to come next. This blog is called Horror and society, so we’ll get to the society part of this. I’ll take a real-life concept from this film, and try to discuss it with as much knowledge as I can personally muster. I’m not going to go into too much detail, but hopefully I’ll bring up something that will make you, the reader, think for a second.

I went back and forth on the topic that should be brought up here, and I think that religious fanaticism would be best here. Our good friend Wikipedia defines fanaticism as a belief or behavior involving uncritical zeal, particularly for an extreme religious or political cause or in some cases sports, or with an obsessive enthusiasm for a pastime or hobby. However, religious fanaticism is a subjective evaluation defined by the culture context that is performing the evaluation. Mind you, this is from Wikipedia, but I think it brings up a couple of great points. It is us as a society that determines what religious fanaticism is and what is simple religious practice.

So, under our current societal boarders, the break from “normal” religion and fanatic religion is the point where practices become dangerous or beliefs completely ignore commonly accepted beliefs about the world and society. I will try not to pass judgment on the beliefs of others; however, I will put the same “subjective evaluation” society puts on religion so I can process it. A group like the FLDS church, I would count as a religious fanatic group. Looking at the FLDS church, we can see a clear break from our society to their society. Their society, which is almost an import from 1800’s, carries with it all of the values from 19^th century Mormonism. Polygamy and placement marriage, blood atonement, dress standards, and other practices are set in the FLDS church. We have deemed these practices to be either archaic or just flat out wrong, so these people are religious fanatics.

What groups this idea in with the Last Exorcism, and also Rosemary’s Baby, is devil worship and demon conjuring. While I would consider demon conjuring to be physically impossible, these films present situations where this act is possible. Just think about real life religious fanatics. Do you think that there is a group out there that believes that they can bring a demon out of hell and into this world? If you don’t, I would suggest you reconsider.

I urge us all to look deep within ourselves and determine not whether our religious beliefs are “mainstream” but whether they are morally sound. Does our religion cause us to be better or does it command us to be distinct for some other reasons? If you don’t have religion, what motivates you?