Starring Fernanda Andrade, Simon Quarterman and Evan Helmuth.Directed by William Brent Bell.
★½
When found-footage is good, it can be very very good, like Chronicle or the first Paranormal Activity, but when it is bad, you have something like this.
The faux-documentary angle is played here, as a young woman named Isabella wants to find out the truth about her mother. Her mother Maria went through an exorcism 20 years previous and killed the two priests and a nun who were initiating it. Maria somehow was sent to an insane asylum in Italy, so with her cameraman Mike, she's off to document/investigate.
The jump-scare tricks aren't often played here. It's more disturbing to watch possessed victims contort themselves into unnatural positions (they hired a real contortionist for one gruesome exorcism).
The shaky-cam technique gets overused. There were times it made Gary Ross look like Wes Anderson. The cast is largely unknown for that "real people" effect, and the acting abilities vary from passable to amateur-hour.
The main problem comes with the end, a giant middle finger to the audience; it's one of those decisions where I can't believe they didn't get it fixed before they released it.
Remember the movie The Last Exorcism? It was also a found-footage fake-doc where the exorcising uncovers something real. I didn't care for it, but I'd say that movie was better than this one.
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