Exorcist Chronicles

Director - Philip Gardiner (House of Sin)
Starring - Rudy Barrow (The Dead Inside), Liz Mente Bishop (Body Count: To Murder a Twink, to Slaughter a Hoe), and Nathan Head (The Harvest)
Release Date - 2013
Genre - Horror
Format - DVD (Personal Collection)

Rating (out of 5):

     The Exorcist is one of the most popular horror films to ever be released and subsequently spawned a plethora of films hoping to make some quick cash by using similar titles with similar plots.  One of the many reasons The Exorcist was so successful was because it was the first to use the exorcist angle and preyed on the audiences faith.  That is also the reason so many films using the exorcist gimmicks fail is because The Exorcist was flawless and worked well on so many dimensions.   That brings me to the Exorcist Chronicles.  Not that long ago I watched the original Exorcist film and followed it up with the xxx parody XXXorcist.  Those that read my review for XXXorcist know my true feelings about that film and how much I really respect The Exorcist.  I received the screener to this one with All American Horror and Alien Crash at Roswell.  I put this one off because I knew that this one would be the weakest of the three films and I was right.   
   The film follows the Vatican as it struggles to hide a string of possessions that have sprung up all over the world. The church turns to a priest that is known for being harsh to get to the bottom of it.  He teams up with a young lady and the two discover that it is not Satan and demons behind the possessions but something older than Christianity and the Catholic church.
     Please don't get me wrong, I wanted to like the movie and I held nothing against it.  I tried to enjoy it but the movie refused to play nice.  I want to address my biggest complaint about the film and that is the found footage segments.  They show those possessed locked in a room starring at the camera.  These segments have no purpose but to be creepy and they fail at that.  They are not creepy and drag on for way too long.  One or two would have been more affective.  The acting is fairly decent but nothing great.  Most of the cast did a decent job portraying their characters but are not really that compelling.  The story had so much potential but fell completely short.  I loved the idea of a town/world being possessed by an ancient evil with a priest combating it in the name of the lord.  Sadly, the story did not unfold that well on screen.  Finally, we do not get any real special effects and on screen deaths.  Instead, the film makers tried to deliver a film filled with horrifying images and cheap scares that play out way too quickly and continues to try to scare the audience with the same cheap tricks they just witnessed.  Overall, this is a weak film that could have been so much more.  I don't recommend this one.