Fallen

Denzel Washington plays a homicide detective on the hunt for the most cunning killer he’s ever encountered – a demon named Azazel. Passing from host to host simply by touching them, Azazel makes a game of toying with detectives until their lives are in shambles. It’s hard to point out just one terrifying possession in this film, when the killer could be anyone at any time.

Prince Of Darkness

John Carpenter combines the themes that worked so well for him in The Thing and Assault On Precinct 13 for the possession film, Prince Of Darkness. A group of academic researchers become trapped in a church surrounded by possessed vagrants when the mysterious liquid they are studying becomes sentient and escapes. It soon becomes clear that the liquid is an evil ooze attempting to release the “anti-God” and bring about the apocalypse, possessing and melting the skin off anyone in its way in the process.

Jason Goes To Hell

To this day, nobody is really sure what exactly Jason Voorhees is. Some say demon, some say mutant, some say smelly guy that walks around the woods and kills any sign of life he finds. In one of his alleged final appearances, the hockey-masked killer had his lore expanded with a supernatural twist. After being blown to pieces by the FBI in the film’s opening moments, Jason’s remains are sent off to a lab for autopsy. However, his heart begins to beat on its own, hypnotizing the pathologist which leads him to take a huge, gnarly bite from it. The killings begin again when Jason assumes the form of his host and embarks on a mission to kill and possess the last member of the Voorhees bloodline.

The Last Exorcism

Presented as another found-footage horror film, naysayers who had grown tired of the device were pleasantly surprised to find a solid, twisted (literally) film in The Last Exorcism. The plot follows a sham exorcist who bites off more than he can chew when he takes on the case of a teenage girl named Nell. Of the film’s many terrifying and brutal scenes, one that stands out above the others is when the demon Abalam contorts and bends Nell’s body at angles that I still see when I close my eyes at night.

The Amityville Horror

Though typically priced to move, no good can come of living in a murder house. As the Lutz family learned in The Amityville Horror. Based on a true story that is now widely dismissed as a hoax, the film follows the family’s account of the strange happenings they experienced after moving into a house that was once the scene of a mass murder. Like the family’s patriarch regularly awaking in the middle of the night and wandering out to the boathouse. My guess whether or not the dad was possessed depends on if they found a stash of Playboys in the boathouse.

Evil Dead 2

Sam Raimi seems to have a thing for hands and that is displayed upfront in his most famous and iconic scene. From Evil Dead 2, Bruce Campbell’s Ash has lost control of his hand. It has become possessed by evil and is intent on murdering him. He literally cuts his problem off at the wrist thanks to a conveniently placed chainsaw. I’ve done far more grotesque things with my hand but this is still a really intense scene.

The Exorcist

The most influential film in the genre. Maybe there were movies about demonic possession before “The Exorcist,” maybe there weren’t. Just like there may have been chocolate bars before Hershey, or rock bands before The Beatles. The Exorcist, with its absolutely and unbendingly realistic tone, is widely considered one of the scariest movies ever made. And it remains the first thing most people think about when they hear the words “demonic possession.” Unless of course they’re unlucky enough to actually know someone who’s been possessed by a demon.

Ashley Bell, who starred in the first movie, is returning for the sequel, as is producer Eli Roth, who says (among other things):

“The first film worked great as a PG-13 psychological film, but now we want to go R-rated and show the true horror of what this subject matter offers. The biggest creative challenge will be coming up with the right title!”

How about The For Real Last Exorcism? Heh heh, stand aside folks, I get paid to write jokes like this. (Deadline)

Patrick Fabian is a face you’ve seen on TV many times before but never took the time to find out who he is on imdb. This week, the long time working actor finally gets his first starring role as con-artist preacher Cotton Marcus in the demonic horror movie The Last Exorcism, which recently won Best Feature, Actor, and Screenplay at After Day Film Festival 2010.

Screen Junkies: How did you get involved with The Last Exorcism?

Patrick Fabian: They had me come into the casting office for an audition, where it was all improvisation. The first person they had me paired up with was Ashley Bell (Nell in The Last Exorcism), we worked on a scene like in the movie, where I had to convince her to go see a doctor. Daniel, the director, liked it and asked me to comeback with a preacher’s sermon next, which he liked a whole lot. They saw a lot of people for the role of Cotton Marcus and I felt really honored getting the chance to play him.

SJ: What was it like working on the set in Louisiana with director Daniel Stamm ?

PF: I found out of what creature of habit I’ve become as a working actor. Regularly you have to get a scene down in less than five takes and with Daniel we would be shooting up 25 to 35 takes at a time.  It really took me out of my comfort zone, where my ego would ask me, “Did I do that right?” But it created that type of environment that became necessary for making the film feel real.

SJ: What kind of research did you do to get into the role of preacher Cotton Marcus?

PF: For an actor to play a preacher it’s such a larger than life role, from having the confidence to get up and the hubris to tell people you have all the answers, so I watched a lot Jimmy Baker and other TV preachers, but a classic film called Elmer Gantry with Burt Lancaster showed a lot for me, what type of person Cotton Marcus is.

SJ: How do you feel about winning the recent Best Actor Award at After Dark Film Festival 2010?

PF: A real honor for a cliché working Joe like me. It’s funny, Eli Roth texted me this morning saying “Our first step towards the Oscars” with a big smiley face at the end. But it’s also really another cliché in that if it wasn’t for Daniel, Ashley, and our cinematographer Zoltan Honti in creating that atmosphere I wouldn’t have been able to do it.

SJ: What are some of your upcoming projects?

PF: “Big Love” Season 5 is about to start filming. With them you’re on call during the season. They’ll call you in a week before filming to come in. It will be great to be back for a 3rd season with them. I also a completed new Nickelodeon series called “Gigantic,” where I play a movie star Dad of all things and that will be on in October.
 

The opening of The Last Exorcism this weekend (read my review here) marks the first theatrically released movie for German-born and American Film Institute-trained filmmaker Daniel Stamm. Screen Junkies sat down with Stamm to talk about being hired by Eli Roth, working in the horror genre, and who is he aspires to work with one day.

Screen Junkies: How did you get involved with this project?

Daniel Stamm: The original writers (Huck Bato and Andrew Gurland) were going to direct this movie but then they committed to another movie.  A friend of mine who was working at Strike Productions heard they were looking for a new director and gave them a copy of my first film, A Necessary Death. They saw it and said  hat they wanted that movie in exact same style but in a horror script…they asked me,“Can I do a horror script?” I said, “I don’t know” but here we are now.

SJ: What was it like working with Eli Roth?

DS: Breathtaking, quite frankly. It was very fortunate to have a producer that is also a writer and director. He has been in your shoes and knows about the intense panic that comes with it. When I wanted to try something in the editing room, he encouraged me to try things out but also knew from his experience how scenes would work and how they would not work within this type of genre. Eli is filled with such enthusiasm that he can walk into a room with a group of people that have a certain opinion or fact, then leave with them thinking the other way around.

SJ: What was the major challenge of making a possession movie and being compared to The Exorcist?

DS:  I thought at first, it was going to be a major challenge. You can’t go up against The Exorcist, so I watched every possession movie possible from The Exorcist to Exorcism of Emily Rose, which was still pretty fresh in audiences’ minds and we even had a real exorcist on the set. The thing is about this movie is set in reality not about the special effects and make-up. It’s more of a question of is this girl really possessed or just crazy?

SJ: How was it working within the docudrama style?

Stamm: A Necessary Death used that style of filmmaking and from that 3-year project it got me this job with The Last Exorcism. Though I do love that style, I want to get away from it now because I don’t want to labeled as that ‘documentary guy’. People already come up to me and tell me, “You have this background in documentary filmmaking’, yet I’ve never made a documentary before.

SJ: What excites you about the horror genre for being a non-horror genre filmmaker?

DS: It’s the most cinematic genre you can work in, it’s all about lights and shadows and sound and music.  It’s so visceral too, where it is the most democratic and non-judgmental genre that can hit anybody from the theology professor to a punk or surfer. Society reacts to fear and terror in the same way.

SJ: What was your experience with working on a PG-13 style horror movie?

DS: We never shot for a PG-13, never mentioned once about what rating it would get, they just said to me make the most scariest movie possible. I assumed and they assumed that it would be R but now it makes sense because the movie isn’t based in any type of gore and the story takes place on a very religious farm where characters wouldn’t say ‘fuck’ a lot. 

SJ: If you weren’t a filmmaker, what would you be doing?

DS: An assassin…(laughs) probably a musician in the style of Nick Cave-ish stuff. If I could make it as a singer/songwriter I would give up all this filmmaking business.

SJ: What are  some of your upcoming projects?

DS: I’m very excited for what my next project will be, yet the deal is about to be signed, so unfortunately I cannot really talk about it.  But I can say this that it is a psychological-supernatural-thriller with a twist and that I’ll be working with my favorite filmmaker in the world on it.

SJ: Who is your favorite filmmaker?

DS: Lars Von Trier is one of my favorite filmmakers, I’ve not seen Antichrist yet but even his non-horror stuff like Dancer in the Dark, Breaking the Waves, and even The Idiots are so terrifying and compelling but Von Tier is not the person I’m going to be working with soon. I know you want to know who the big ‘Mr. X ‘ is. He is a lot like Von Trier in that he is one of the few writer and directors around telling original stories, and some of those have gotten him crucified lately.

Forgive my cynicism, but I kind of doubt that it will be the last. After all, even after The Exorcist III, Morgan Creek Productions still felt it was a viable franchise and made not one, but two movies, almost exactly alike, with the same actor, as prequels to the original.

With that in mind, we created a little board game that you can play when you see The Last Exorcism, but, it’ll be dark in the theater, so bring plenty of flashlights. 

If by now you don’t know what Chatroulette is than you probably think you’re reading this on a toaster. Chatroulette offers people the opportunity to randomly video chat with one another, troll for hot chicks, or in more encounters than not, watch a dude masturbate. Some companies even set up fake feeds to advertise their products and websites. This is the exact approach Lionsgate took advantage of for this brilliant viral video for The Last Exorcism. Watch as dudes land on a hot chick hoping to get a flash of the goods, but instead get freaked the f*ck out. Kudos, marketing execs. Kudos.

Land on the hilarious video after the jump…

The Last Exorcism – BEST OF Chatroulette reactions – Watch more Funny Videos

The Last Exorcism
PG-13, 90min., 2010
Cast: Partrick Fabin, Ashely Bell, Iris Bahr, Louis Hertum, and  Caleb Landury Jones
Directed by Daniel Stamm
Screenplay by Huck Barto and Andreww Gurland

The Last Exorcism is where "The Office" meets Rosemary’s Baby, a film that brings a fresh approach to the shaky camera movie of the past decade but then settles into standard horror fare.

A fourth generation Louisiana pastor named Cotton Marcus (Patrick Fabian) has hit a crisis of faith. He has been in the exorcism business since he was 10 years old but now feels that it does more harm than good. He invites a two person documentary crew (Iris Bahr and unseen camera man) to witness his last exorcism and to show it for what the theatrical fraud that it really is.

The crew and Pastor Marcus travel into the heart of the bayou to the Sweatzer farmer, the kind of place that locals warn them to head back from, where they witness what might not be soul possession, but something far more sinister and humanly evil.

Producer Eli Roth and director newcomer Daniel Stamm are out to make their own homage to Cannibal Holocaust, the pinnacle docu-horror drama from the early 80s. They have a lot of fun with the set up of this American Gothic community and the role that the perspective camera plays with audience.

Pastor Marcus, played be unknown TV actor Fabian, gets to chew the theatrical church scenery of the southern Pentecostal. He’s the kind of snake skin preacher that can create a Sunday serum about God and turn it into praises about banana bread. Fabian. like Marcus. has a great command of the camera as he rattles on about the nature of business and exorcisms.

The first hour is a pure biting set up about the fraud Christianity has put on Southern society. Pastor Marcus hilariously walks us through an exorcism, showing how beds shake, demonic sounds erupt via iPods, and crosses ooze smoke thanks to inner liquid capsules. All of which is set-up to the actual horror these characters find themselves battling at the climax of the film.

As the film progresses, originality is cast out and standard horror clichés begin to emerge. Pastor Marcus and the crew are given a chance to leav the town but decide, like most horror character’s, to turn back around and face the demons head on. This involves the go-to human scarifies, ring of fire, and occult battles. This isn’t surprising considering it’s an Eli Roth production, yet in watching how the film sets itself up, we know these filmmakers are capable of creating a more surprising and non-conventional ending.

With this exception, The Last Exorcism does offer a surprisingly daring and original take on this very tired part of the horror genre.

Grade: B-

_{A lady in the street, but a freak in the bed.}

A trailer for The Last Exorcism has hit the interwebs, and we couldn’t help but notice that the Eli Roth production looks a lot like the first Exorcist.

Just like the original, the film follows a young girl possessed by the devil who is walking on the ceiling, contorting her body in horrifying ways and acting like an all-around *sshole. But don’t worry. Rumor has it that the film has at least one modern twist. Instead of vomiting split pea soup, the victim upchucks Healthy Choice Hearty Vegetable Barley, a low-calorie alternative for today’s health-conscious horror fan.

Watch The Last Exorcism trailer below.

The Last Exorcism Trailer – Watch more Movie Trailers