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In “The Last Exorcism,” we meet Reverend Cotton Marcus (Patrick Fabian), a professional man of God who has been up on the pulpit thumping the good book since he was a child. He is accomplished at the job, whipping his followers into a frenzy and passing the basket to harvest the rewards. Cotton has also taken on the practice of exorcism that has been in his family for generations. With a calm conviction, he looks at the camera and assures us that, “If you believe in God, you have to believe in the devil.”

The problem is that Cotton isn’t sure if he believes in God anymore. He has been performing these exorcisms to expose the practice as a scam carried out on blind believers. To prove his claims, he invites a small, two-person camera crew along with him to the rural town of Ivanwood, Louisiana, to document his final exorcism.

There, at a small, secluded farmhouse, he meets Louis Sweetzer (Louis Herthum) who is convinced that his sixteen-year-old daughter, Nell (Ashley Bell), is being overtaken by the devil, and only the good preacher can save her soul. He meets Nell, who is about as sweet and innocent as any backwoods farmer’s daughter can be, but seems to be blacking out at night and slaughtering the cattle. Cotton decides, with a wink to the camera, that an exorcism is the only way to free the girl of the beast within.

After rigging her room with moving picture frames and a rattling bed, Cotton performs the faux ceremony to the gaping-jawed joy of the father. Unfortunately, Cotton soon realizes that there is something indeed hiding behind Nell’s lovely grin that will challenge the preacher to rediscover his faith.

A sort of cinematic collage, “The Last Exorcism” is fashioned from ideas and images that have grown to be commonplace. It is, at first glance, merely “Paranormal Activity” meets “The Exorcist” meets “Rosemary’s Baby” meets “The Blair Witch Project” meets…the list goes on. But to transcribe them all from my notes would make for a hell of a boring review. Let’s merely sum up by stating that many aspects of “The Last Exorcism” is familiar ground “borrowed” from other sources.

It is easy to dismiss this sort of film and write it off as lazy storytelling, but “The Last Exorcism” has a few facets that make it worthwhile. The film is an example of the relatively new sub-genre known as a “Found Tape Film” that plays as if someone just pushed the record button on a camera and we see what is captured. This sort of fare is usually kept simple (people lost in the woods, monster destroys city), but “The Last Exorcism” possesses a good, well-told plot. You come to know and care for just about everyone on screen. Motivations are constantly questioned as the story unfolds.

Patrick Fabian does an excellent job making Cotton likable and engaging. It would have been easy to hate a man who is essentially a con artist preying on people that believe in him, but Fabian gets us to root for him. Ashley Bell’s performance is no small feat either. Without the benefit of special effects, Bell is convincing as a girl possessed, twisting and writhing in pain. Nothing is more frightening in the film than her haunted gaze.

“The Last Exorcism” is rated PG-13 and, by the constrictions that the rating brings, is better because of it. The movie shows you very little as many of the shocks and scares are shown out of focus, off-camera, or only briefly revealed. This, mixed with the realistic handheld look, makes for a very effective, tension-filled fright flick.

Where the film missteps is in logic and resolution. Despite the fact the movie is supposed to be footage from a documentary crew, there is ominous music inexplicably played during some of the uneasy moments. Also, there are times when the action is captured from more than one camera, which isn’t possible either. These are small mistakes, to be sure, but they make it difficult to invest completely in the film. Where the movie takes us in its final act is also lackluster and disappointing. Some of the last moments seem to be directly culled from stock footage of “The Blair Witch Project” to the point that it is distracting. The result is an unsatisfactory ending to an otherwise solid film.

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