2008 Horror Fest: Chronicles Of An Excorcism: 27 Out Of 100 Stars

Saw this one available for download and read a short review that said it was wonderfully awful so I figured I'd give it a shot.

Basic premise is Blair Witch meets The Exorcist. We open with an amateur film crew arriving at a rundown house in the middle of a cornfield, the local Pastor has asked them to come out and document an exorcism being performed by 2 ministers or whoever the church sends to do them. It's all shot with hand cams and not big budget equipment. It's a very good premise and set up if you don't have a lot of money. The acting and writing however is pretty sub par.

It isn't even that cheesy, it's just sort of monotonously bad. They repeat a ton of stuff, do a lot of nothing, use the phrase "Doing The Lords Work" about 100 times. The acting only gets cheesy during the intense scenes when they super emote, but even then it's not fun, it's just annoying. There's a great scene in a corn field where the same exact shot and reactions are repeated so much that by the 5th time i was cheering, hoping it would loop like that for the remaining 45 minutes of the film.

The girl who's possessed is pretty hot but she doesn't do much besides lay in bed and be possessed. They use a voice effect when the demon speaks thru her but they lay it over her actual voice and it just sounds super cheesy.

The 3 holy men in the film are pretty fair actors, I mean, they do ok until they have to really emote. The film crew, who we mostly only hear however sound like RF Video trying to document an exorcism. A lot of stupid questions and fake surprise and the like.

There is a pretty glorious scene near the end where the try and do a final exorcism on the girl. It's really long, there's much thrashing and pretending to hold down and shouting and bad acting. I think I heard horse hooves and the Pastor speaks in tongues and it goes on forever.

Not a bad idea for a film if you don't have a big budget, however trying to fill it with talking and religious rhetoric and what not made it a total bore fest. A little bit of cheese but not enough to make it fun and a lot of boredom and overall bad writing and acting make it a forgettable trip to Church.