Mock documentary 'The Last Exorcism' has a smooth, Satan finish

LOOK, I TOTALLY understand if you've sworn off all low-budget, virally marketed horror movies involving some cheap-to-film premise about documentary footage.

But if you can stand to see just one more, then check out "The Last Exorcism," a lean and witty variation on the documentary-gone-wrong theme.

The movie is commercially unrelated to the moribund "Exorcist" franchise, but it does borrow from the William Friedkin original the idea of a faith-challenged cleric who participates cynically in an exorcism he believes to be a medieval freak show.

Here, he's Cotton Marcus (Patrick Fabian), a fundamentalist preacher who's somewhat akin to Robert Duvall's character in "The Apostle," a man whose talent for the art of preaching may surpass his actual belief in what he preaches.

He hasn't renounced God, but he's come to see the rites and rituals of the exorcism as a crude form of faith-healing for rural people who have some psychological affliction - if a possessed person is "cured," then it's cheaper than therapy or Prozac.

Still, Marcus feels like a phony and decides to expose the practice as fraud, hiring out for one last exorcism, and bringing along a documentary crew to film his sleight of hand.

Of course, all horror fans know what happens to cynical clerics who decide there's no such thing as a real demon, and "The Last Exorcism" remains true to the form - modernizing the character by making him a hip, funny (Fabian is very good), relatable guy who thinks that Satan is someone who exists only in episodes of "South Park."

There is no doubt, though, that something evil is at work at the site of the proposed exorcism, where a widower (Louis Herthum) lives with his squirrelly, suspicious son (Caleb Landry Jones) and obviously troubled daughter (Ashley Bell).

The girl is reportedly sleepwalking with a knife and slaughtering the livestock. Is this possession? There is plenty of evidence to suggest these acts, if they are hers, are related to the psychological trauma of losing her mother.

Other evidence surfaces to suggest a more troubling cause for her "acting out," and while Marcus and his crew are unnerved by these revelations, they only reinforce their belief that the cause of the girl's behavior is depressingly human.

Using the limiting visual dimension of the documentary framework, "The Last Exorcism" still manages to build and deepen character, and to keep the story moving. It's a more nimble feat of storytelling than "Paranormal Activity," last summer's horror sleeper. And, like "Drag Me To Hell," yields real chills within PG-13 constraints. Kudos to German director Daniel Stamm.