“The Last Exorcism” was also fairly typical—girl is possessed, father doesn’t know what to do, holy man summoned to save her—but it employed the found-footage format to a somewhat creepy effect, and a last-minute twist tied things up nicely. I didn’t enjoy watching that movie because of my own personal taste, but I respected it; I knew it was trying to do something different with the form. But “The Last Exorcism Part II” doesn’t strive for any kind of originality. First, it abandons the original’s found-footage format. Second, it goes from being about a girl possibly being possessed to that same girl just trying to be normal, which isn’t riveting enough to fill an entire 88-minute movie. And lastly, is there any plot more boring than, “Demons didn’t get you the first time, so now they’re back”? It’s the ultimate we-wanted-to-make-money-off-this-idea premise.
“The Last Exorcism” focused on teen girl Nell Sweetzer (Ashley Bell), who was possessed, mysteriously pregnant, and used by some Satanic cult to bring the devil into the world, I guess? Anyway, she was kind of saved at the end of the movie, and “The Last Exorcism Part II” picks up exactly at that point, with her in the woods, having just lived through something terrible, and not exactly knowing what to do next. She goes into someone’s home, crawls into their bed, but wakes up the next morning with absolutely no memory of anything that’s happened; the only thing she remembers is the name “Abalam,” but she’s not sure why. (He was the evil demon from the first film who inhabited her body.) With no one to take care of her and the possibility she may be crazy, the formerly deeply religious teen is placed in a halfway house for troubled girls, gets a job at a local hotel, and starts trying to pull her life together. Except for where, of course, Abalam isn’t having any of it.
Soon Nell starts hearing weird things in the hotel where she works, seeing bizarre images, and she just has this feeling—something bad is coming. (Of course it is!) And now that she’s outside of the faith-heavy environment where she grew up, everything seems like a temptation: clothes from actual stores, rock music from actual radios, and boys, especially nice ones like coworker Chris (Spencer Treat Clark), who legitimately just wants to get to know her better. But how can she even consider becoming a part of this new life when her last one isn’t really finished? We all know Abalam won’t easily let her go.
What screenwriters Ed Gass-Donnelly (who also directed the film) and Damien Chazelle have in “The Last Exorcism Part II” is an interesting kernel of an idea—of being stripped of your past, forced to adapt to something different, urged to leave your old identity behind. But the film is almost too literal with its comparisons between “worldly” sin and what’s trying to claim Nell—demons are responsible for all of the world’s evil seems like such a simplistic, and outdated, suggestion—and the audience knows her experiments with this normal life will probably be short-lived. And by the time a voodoo priestess shows up to perform a free exorcism, you know where “The Last Exorcism Part II” is going to show up.
The predictableness of the story is a shame for Bell, who rolls well with the few creepy effects in the film (like a malevolent flock of birds, jarring sound effects, and an inanimate statue that seems to interact with Nell). Aside from her committed performance, though, “The Last Exorcism Part II” is your typically unimaginative schlock. (But yes, it of course leaves the door open for yet another sequel. Obviously.)
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