When it comes to horror films these days I guess I’m too old and attuned to how films are made to be scared by them, but that doesn’t stop them getting the odd good jump in the seat out of me! Having said that though the odd film can really creep me out, if done well, and when they can do that rather than just be bloody and in your face then you know they have done something very right. When I saw the trailer for ‘The Last Exorcism’ I thought it looked ok, but then I saw the viral marketing campaign for it and that really got my attention. They used chatroulette, which is an internet service where people are randomly paired up to talk on video chat, and with this campaign they used a pre recorded video of a girl getting possessed while she talks to the people on the other end. The genuine reactions from the people on the other side were edited together for the film and it was a brilliant piece of marketing, so I knew I had to see the film for that reason alone.

“The Reverend Cotton Marcus had performed more exorcisms than he could remember before he visited the Louisiana farm of Louis Sweetzer. That would be a day he wouldn't soon forget. The last person Louis Sweetzer ever thought he would invite to his farm was an exorcist. But his young daughter Nell had been acting so strange. He could think of no explanation for her behaviour other than possession by demons. But many long years of attending to those with questionable spiritual infestations has left Cotton a broken man. The faith he once proudly held up as a shield against evil had deserted him long ago.”

With a cast of unknowns to keep the documentary real footage feel for the film you could half expect some dodgy actors, but instead every character was really well portrayed by these unknown actors. Add in a very tight and tense script and what they ended up making was a brilliant horror film that ticked a lot of the boxes for today’s audience while also doing something different and genuinely good. It fell away in the last few minutes for me as it felt like they just gave the audience the typical ending, but other than that it had me on the edge of my seat the whole way through.

8.5 out of 10 from me.