LegiontheFinalExorcism

Legion: The Final Exorcism (2006)

This movie starts off like your typical possession and exorcism movie, which have been very popular of late. But there is a strange twist with this one. While watching it I kind of got a television vibe from it. Think X-Files with a demon tossing, butt kicking, cross earring wearing minister instead of an FBI agent in the lead. Though this isn’t nearly as good as that show and has a very inexpensive shot on digital vibe to it as well. The lead actor is named David Heavener and he portrays the minister, Father Michael. We see thru a series of flashbacks that he is special and after a personal tragedy has started his own sort of crusade against demon possession. He is contacted by the mother of a young woman that has been acting out and showing some strange behavior that the doctors have diagnosed as various mental and physical ailments. Of course Michael believes that something else is going on and that the girl is possessed by demons. After much investigation that really feels like padding he gets down to casting the demon out of her.

I’m sort of torn on this one guys. It really isn’t a good movie, but I found myself interested from start to finish. There is an interesting twist about the possession and how it occurs that makes an effort to combine a real life evil we see in the news and the storyline of the demon. I can predict that I wont’ ever take the time to sit thru this one again, but I don’t feel like I wasted my time on it either. The movie also does a decent job making the possessed girl awfully scary looking on what had to be a very small budget. The makeup consists of some contact lenses and some green face paint over basic latex appliances. It is a simple job but it works.

There are also a couple of annoying things about Legion The Final Exorcism that I wanted to mention. The first is that this is clearly something that was put together to try and sell a T.V. series about the cases of the minister Father Michael. There is that vibe that things are left unresolved and that the character is headed off to other cases. When I did my research for this review it was confirmed that this was initially put together as a pilot/first episode of a show called Costa Chica: Confessions of an Exorcist. In typical exploitation fashion that I can respect it has been repackaged to cash in on the popularity of recent exorcist movies. But since this was part of a potential series they leave far too many things unexplained so as a movie it annoys me.

Though I can understand why it didn’t get picked up by anyone, which brings me to my second point. The acting leaves a lot to be desired. There is supposed to be some real emotion and raw scenes. And I have to admit that the writing is up to the challenge of pulling this sort of stuff off. But the actors, including David Heavener really can’t sell it.

This derails what is a rather good bit of screen writing. I mean I love the guy but when Roddy Piper is noticeably the best actor in your movie you are in big trouble.

Just let me wrap things up here with a final thought or two. If you enjoy this sort of movie then I imagine that you will probably like watching Legion The Last Exorcism. Though again I can’t imagine that it will be a title that you revisit. But not every movie is going to be a classic that fans will flock out to own. Sometimes they are just a good way to kill 90 or so minutes and that isn’t a bad thing.

2 ½ out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer