I skipped over THE LAST EXORCISM (2010) for years, thinking it just another exorcism movie, and a found-footage one at that (insert raspberry noise). After reading an interesting review, though, I took a chance and boy, what a gem it turned out to be for me. THE LAST EXORCISM delivers a high level of creepiness packaged in a thoughtful, intelligent meditation on faith and skepticism.

The movie is a mockumentary in which Cotton Marcus is a minister who lost his faith after it was doctors, not God, who cured his son of a severe illness. Patrick Fabian brings real charisma, humanity, and likeability to the role, which makes the movie instantly engaging. Marcus still ministers and performs exorcisms, but for him, it’s a show, a service that helps people feel better but otherwise doesn’t mean anything. Still, after hearing about a child dying during an exorcism, he decides it’s time to throw in the towel, and agrees to do the documentary so that fewer people might believe in the power of exorcism and risk getting hurt. His last exorcism turns out to be a Louisiana farm, where Louis Sweetzer (a solid and menacing Louis Herthum) raises his teenage children Nell and Caleb in a strict religious household. Louis doesn’t believe in science because doctors failed his wife, so he’s turned to God for guidance in every aspect of his life.

What follows is something that surprises him. Nell appears to be genuinely possessed. Or is she?

THE LAST EXORCISM rolls out as both an entertaining possession story and also a meditation on God, faith, and fraud. I had one big criticism, which was the ending, which worked on one level for me but not as a whole; it could have achieved the same thing with a smaller scale. But so what. The direction and scripting are tight, the acting is terrific, the found-footage element plays as advantage and not gimmick (the two filmmakers even end up personally involved in the story), and the end result engages your head as well as your heart rate. I’m happy to recommend this as another indie gem that proves good story can make even tired old tropes feel like they’re young again.

Directed by Panos Cosmatos, MANDY (2018) is a bizarre revenge horror film with a hallucinogenic atmosphere, gallons of blood, Nicholas Cage, a crazy haunting metal score by Jóhann Jóhannsson, and plenty of visual elements reminiscent of ’80s metal band album covers and ’70s horror flicks. The sum far exceeds its by-turns ponderous and ultra-violent parts, though it doesn’t really add up to much. Just sit back and enjoy the experience.

The film begins in 1983 with Red (Cage), a Northwestern logger, returning home to his hippie artist wife Mandy (Andrea Riseborough). Their relationship is expertly drawn in quirky conversations, familiarity, and a deep, quiet connection that works well on screen. Unfortunately, Mandy catches the eye of a cult leader (Linus Roache), who summons his allies, a trio of bikers deranged and deformed by a special brew of LSD, to abduct her for him. Red escapes and for the rest of the movie rages a bloody swathe of death and destruction on the people who wrecked his life.

There are some wild set pieces in the film, such as Red fighting the demonic bikers, Mandy meeting the cult’s leader while under the influence of an exotic drug drawn from a hideous giant insect, and Red in his underwear downing an entire bottle of vodka and howling his grief, which starts off sad before plunging into the absurd and then becoming even sadder. It’s all good metal band cover fun, and Red’s revenge is a dark road trip into hell.

The film might have worked better for me, though, if the cult was more interesting, and what they worshipped was real. The cult gets a lot of dialogue, though little of it is interesting. Cosmatos seems to go out of his way to say, “Here are the stock villain cultists you’d expect in the ’80s,” which gave Cage something to fight but otherwise not much to appreciate. The bikers and their back story were far more fun. So in the end, the movie feels deep, which gives the very basic revenge story some mythic resonance, but the antagonist fails to join the party, weakening the movie for me.

In the end, I liked it and give it an A- for visuals, atmosphere, and crazy, but a B/B+ overall. Despite that overall score, I recommend it for anybody who likes horror movies, as it’s a unique experience that creates something new and somewhat powerful from our memories of the old.

HELL HOUSE, LLC (2015) is an excellent found-footage horror film, a part of the genre I typically avoid due to its predictability and lurching cameras. While the screenplay focuses on the scares and gives us little reason to invest in the characters, it’s a solid horror film propelled by mystery and suspense and just plain good fun. My editor, Bradley Englert, recommended this one to me, and it turned out to be a great recommendation.

The film begins with news coverage of tragedy at a haunted house attraction in Abaddon, NY. Nobody knows what happened to the people running it. The police sealed off the house and refuse to release details of their investigation. Five years later, a documentary crew tries to find out what happened. They’re approached by Hell House, LLC’s sole survivor, who has tapes.

The result is a story about a Halloween attraction company arriving in Abaddon to set up “Hell House” in an abandoned hotel for Halloween. They end up living there for the month leading up to the attraction opening to the public. We’re introduced to the owner, his girlfriend, three crew members, and three local actors they hire. While living in the hotel, they transform it into a pretty cool haunted house, learn some of the hotel’s very strange history, and deal with scary occurrences.

The characters are likeable, though we’re not given enough story for them to really invest in these people. There are conflicts, but they’re on the surface, and otherwise each character is given a single trait that defines them: Alex is the driven owner in denial about what’s going on, Sarah is his cute and plucky girlfriend, Paul is a goof, etc.

The main event is the house itself and the mystery surrounding it, what happened the night everything went down, and the suspense leading up to it. While low budget, the monster element is pretty well done. There is some denial and bad decisions that affect willing suspension of disbelief–like scared people running around in the dark with flashlights instead of turning on the lights–but the raw found footage feel and pretty decent acting make up for it and then some.

Overall, HELL HOUSE, LLC is a solid, tense, fun horror flick, and as a found footage film, it’s actually quite great.

Written and directed by Gaspar Noé, CLIMAX (2018) is a French horror film about a group of dancers celebrating after a rehearsal and succumbing to a group freakout after somebody heavily spikes the sangria with LSD. The result is loud, crazy, but at times oppressive and tedious.

Supposedly, the film is based on a true story about a dance troupe in the 90s. It begins at the end, and even rolls the final credits, before introducing us to the dancers by way of a series of audition tapes. From there, we see the final rehearsal, filled with some pretty amazing dance moves, and the after party. After a while, it becomes clear that the sangria was spiked with something heavy, leading to a sinister collective freakout.

The film is highly stylized, with red lighting and odd camera angles and even the camera being upside down for a while. It’s also lightly scripted, resulting in stimulating visuals but very little story and virtually no character development beyond the one- or two-dimensional. The whole thing comes across as a single interpretive dance piece, with the director telling the dancers to just keep dancing in character. What we do get to learn about the dancers is largely (and at length, and repeatedly) that they’re full of themselves and horny. As a result, we may be interested in seeing what happens to them but really don’t care what does. Combined with Noé staying way too long on his sequences, the result is overstimulating tedium. There’s something not quite right with a movie when I’m watching an extremely titillating scene but I’m checking my watch, or that I leave the theater feeling like the movie was 2.5 hours when it was only an hour and forty minutes.

In the end, I liked CLIMAX quite a bit, but in a reluctant sort of way. The idea, the dancing, the madness, the rush, and the overall audaciousness of the film all add up to something unique and extraordinary. But for me, in the end, it ended up feeling oppressive and self-indulgent without a solid payoff.