In the world of found footage, there are ten bad entries for every good one, with even the best being (unfairly) stigmatized as lazy cash-grabs. Like all horror, found footage uses the monstrous to speak to issues that are bigger than the sum of the film’s parts, and like all horror, found footage executes this to varying levels of success. Daniel Stamm’s 2010 haunt, The Last Exorcism, is not just good (actually). It’s not just an exceptional entry in the found footage genre, in the horror genre, but it’s also a powerful examination of irony, earnestness, and the way that both can be weaponized to devastating effect.
At its heart, The Last Exorcism is a redemption story. Or, at least, that’s what its subject believes he is setting out to do. The Reverend Cotton Marcus—played with convivial smugness by Patrick Fabian—knows that he and others in his profession are culpable in the deaths of mentally ill or neurodivergent people whose “exorcisms” came at the cost of their lives. In exposing exorcism for the sham that it is, Cotton hopes to curb the dangerous practice before it spreads any further.
But the Reverend’s mission is a little less Val Valentino and a lot more Harold Hill. See, Cotton is a showman, for whom faith and the grift have been inextricably intertwined since his “miraculous” debut as an evangelical child preacher at age ten (miracles, it turns out, require a lot of hard Saturdays studying verse). After decades of honing his craft—both at the pulpit and in the exorcism—Cotton has amassed an impressive array of tools to help people believe the lie of faith that he’s pretended all this time.
It’s difficult, at this point, to look at a found footage horror film and not balk at any claim that its story necessitates—or is even improved by—the faux documentary form. As a genre, late-stage found footage is one that’s distrustful, or even contemptuous of its audience, foregoing story in favor of shortcuts or cheap tricks to keep their audiences on edge. In some of the more cynical entries, bodies are thrown at the camera hither and yon, as if to say “here, stupid, this is what you came here for.”
Sound familiar?
Cotton Marcus’ crusade against exorcism may sound benevolent, but his judgment and contempt of his audience is revealed in sly looks at the camera, and an ironic detachment to the words he speaks. In one early scene, Cotton bets Iris, one of the documentarians, that he can whip his congregation into so great a fervor that they’ll be moved to the Holy Spirit over his mother’s banana bread recipe. Smash cut to him speaking in that hypnotic preacher’s cadence, his voice a graveled roar, with an arm in the air as he exalts two ripe bananas and sugar in a bowl.
Hallelujah, yes you can.
I am a person who is, let’s be honest here, pathologically trusting. Despite a lifetime of evidence to the contrary, I believe people when they tell me they know things, and I’m quick to re-examine when I’m told that I’m wrong. It’s not for lack of critical thinking, and I’ve been Terminally Online™ long enough to know better. No matter how hard I try, I have a hardwired belief that people are good until proven otherwise (sidenote: this is a trauma response, I assume, but that can be unpacked another time). Simply put: I’m sincere. Earnest. The perfect audience for a horror film, and the perfect mark for a showman with a particular bag of tricks.
In 2010, the year in which The Last Exorcism was released, the landscape may have been somewhat less outwardly unstable than the post-truth era of 2021—though The Tea Party and the latest iteration of the religious right were gathering steam, so it’s a stretch to say things were good. But now, after so many years of continued gaslighting on a national scale, earnestness and sincerity are not only a weakness, but a liability.
Among a few of my friends, it used to be a common joke that I would be the one most likely to get hoodwinked into a cult. Then, in an anxiety spiral during the darker parts of lockdown, I discovered just how easy it was for a reasonable person to follow a reasonable Twitter thread just a reply or two away from QAnon-level conspiracy theories, and that joke took on a certain darkness.
Ever since, I’ve doubled down on that familiar vigilance of being a human being on the internet in 2021 out of a fear of becoming the loved one that someone loses to a dark corner of the internet. In every sphere of life, there’s a different showman with a different set of tricks, but they’re all bound by that same naked contempt for their audience and its perceived gullibility.
What place is there, then, for sincerity? At what point are cynicism and detachment the only way to survive?
The Last Exorcism’s answer to this question is Nell Sweetzer, a possessed teenaged girl played in a powerhouse performance by Ashley Bell. If Cotton’s irony and cynicism creates the framework that holds the audience at arm’s length, then Nell is the quavering sincerity that gives this story strength and soul.
While the film positions Cotton as a savior figure, it’s more accurate to say that the two represent diametrically opposed forces, exerting equal influence on one another. Nell’s sweetness is disarming, as is the sincerity and humility of her belief. In order for the film’s conceit to work, the audience must know three things: Nell Sweetzer believes she is possessed, Cotton Marcus believes she is both religious and mentally ill, and one of the two must be wrong.
When positioned against this girl who desperately wants to be free of the darkness that’s forced her to unwittingly kill her father’s livestock, the reverend’s tricks seem less like a tool to “deliver a service in the way they need it,” and more like a vulgar insult to someone in crisis. After the fake exorcism, he shows the audience the secret behind the smoking cross and guttural groans, and again, he smiles at the camera and we are let in on the joke at the Sweetzers’ expense.
The fake exorcism doesn’t work (spoiler alert), and Cotton is forced to reckon with his relationship to his ironic detachment as the arm’s-length view is severed at the metaphorical elbow. Like Cotton himself, the demon that possesses Nell is a showman with a taste for irony, and so many of the film’s most frightening images involve the demon’s inversion of Nell’s most sincere moments from earlier in the film (a recorder version of “Greensleeves” provides a particularly haunting mirror). Her tenderness is weaponized against Cotton and the audience again and again, culminating in a two-minute scene in the family barn that sets The Last Exorcism apart from so many others in the genre (I won’t spoil the scene, but there’s a shaky bootleg on YouTube if you’d like to find it).
All of its magic hinges on Bell’s performance, when every crick of her neck, every chattering of her teeth and eerie bend of her back embody just how wrong things have gone. The unease of this moment is made particularly more powerful by the film’s sparse use of CGI, relying instead on practical effects and its lead’s double-jointedness.
After years of consuming horror as its perfect audience member—enamored with the genre but terrified like it’s the first time, every time—I have yet to find a scene that’s impacted me the way this one has, and so much of that hinges on the sincerity not just of Nell, but of Ashley Bell’s performance. When Nell despairs after not having been fixed by the reverend’s first exorcism despite having wanted it to work, I believe her. When Nell possessed takes her turn to flick a brief, knowing smile at the camera behind Cotton’s back, I believe her. In a genre where cynicism and cheap scares can run rampant, a sincere performance is a film’s greatest strength. This is true both within outside of the film’s narrative, and in this, The Last Exorcism turns a mirror to sincerity and its perseverance in the face of ironic detachment. Reverend Cotton Marcus is redeemed not by his exposé of shady exorcism practices, but by his sincere embrace of a mission he never believed in.
When faced with a post-truth reality that demeans its participants for their belief that someone is who they say they are, sincerity is both a weakness and a weapon, depending on who wields it. Bucking against the assertion of found footages’ cynicism or laziness, this film proves its capability for self-awareness, for empathy, provided the choices are made with attention and care. While Cotton and Nell may be the driving forces of the narrative, every character relationship in the film is either a victim of, or a predator appealing to, sincerely held belief.
And while I don’t believe that many of Cotton Marcus’ irony poisoned real-life counterparts are capable of the kind of self-awareness the film displays, this is a rare entry in the horror genre that doesn’t position the Sweetzer’s sincere belief as something to be mocked, nor does the film sneer at its audience as it pushes out shock after senseless shock. Instead, it shows us the way that bad actors—or actors with selfish motives and insincere actions—can weaponize that sincerity just the same. But it also shows us that not believing in a thing—in demons, in God, in a scary movie, in the inherent goodness of humankind—is not the automatically superior position. It’s too easy to believe that the answer to bad-faith actors is categorical disbelief that sincerity is good.
Instead, The Last Exorcism encourages us to consider the ways in which belief is a strength against smug detachment; that genuine fear is better than a glance at the camera and a joke eked out of the side of the mouth. Belief may be a weakness, may be a weapon, may mean punching at a demon with a fist made of exposed nerves, or getting hurt by bad-faith actors again and again and again. My friends and I wouldn’t survive if we were all like me, ready to believe that the average stranger wouldn’t tell us we were wrong if it wasn’t true. But nor would we survive if we were all like them, ossified by repeated disappointment without sincerity to pull us back from the edge.
Jacqueline Boucher (she/her) lives and writes in Alaska, where she serves as the poetry editor for Lammergeier Magazine. Her work has appeared in The Journal, New South, The McNeese Review, and others. She has opinions about problematic sexy vampires and would love to talk to you about it. Twitter: @jacqueboucher