Director: Ed Gass-Donnelly
Talent: Ashley Bell, Julia Garner, Spencer Treat Clark, Louis Herthem, Muse Watson
Release Date: June 7th 2013
Picking up immediately after the events of the first film, The Last Exorcism Part II follows the attempts of previously possessed Nell (Ashley Bell) as she tries to rebuild her life. She ends up in a foster home for girls, but you can barely say “Beelzebub” before it’s gone all creaky floorboards and cracking mirrors again.
With no other talent in sight, too much of the film relies on the young lead. Her conveyance of physical pain and suffering is well-executed, but the rest of her screen time is taken up with such unintentionally droll presentations of naïve innocence that you’ll wonder if she is, in fact, going to turn into a kitten, rather than the plot’s alleged “tiger demon”. There are no scares here, and the only frightening thing about this “horror” is the barely submerged virgin/purity subplot that makes the whole movie seem like some sort of odd propaganda for the Westboro Baptist church. That, at least, would add some intrigue to this terrible piece of work.
