I’ll warn you right now, folks: This one is a very slow burn. This movie gets really scary really quick when it does, but getting to that point takes quite a while.

Fortunately, the intervening time is not spent in vain, as it’s focused entirely on our characters. Chief among them is Reverend Cotton Marcus, played to perfection by Patrick Fabian. Marcus is a first-rate snake oil salesman, focused on telling his congregation what they want to hear so they’ll respond in turn through their wallets. Still, this con artist is very sympathetic for three reasons:

1. He’s trying to support his family. We see that his son was born with some illness or other and Marcus barely has the cash to pay for treatment because he can’t get insured — something that this moviegoer can empathize with all too well.
2. As focused as he is on the money, Marcus genuinely wants to improve the lives of those in his flock and his heart really is in the right place regarding them. After all, his decision to quit the pulpit hinges on knowledge of those unfortunate few who are killed in exorcisms, suggesting that his profession may actually do more harm than good.
3. Marcus is very self-aware and (if you’ll pardon the term) repentant about his profession in lying. He’s so repentant, in fact, that he put together a small crew to film a documentary exposing the falsehoods of exorcism so he can retire guilt-free. Thus, we have our movie.

Next, we meet Ashley Bell in the role of Nell Sweetzer. Folks, this girl is going places. At the start of the movie, she’s adorably sweet. Soon after, she’s cycling through various levels of scared, frightened and psychotic. This premise demanded a girl who could make the viewer scared of her and scared for her at the exact same time. It would be a tall order for any young actress, but I can’t possibly measure how far Bell knocked it out of the park.

The first act also firmly establishes our movie’s setting: The Louisiana boondocks. A place of poverty, illiteracy and isolation. A place forgotten by and distrustful of anything that we might call civilization. This would be enough for religious fervor to get a good strong foothold, but the Sweetzer farm is something else entirely.

Meet Nell’s father, Louis Sweetzer. This is a man who is truly broken. A man who blames his wife’s death of cancer on the doctors who failed to save her. As a result, he’s turned his back on all science and logic, going to God completely. He is so dependent on Christianity that he started home-schooling his kids to keep them away from outside influences, going so far as to pull them away from the local church because the church in this rural town wasn’t Christian enough. Yet he remains sympathetic, for two reasons. First is that he’s brought to vivid, tearjerking life by Louis Herthum. Second is that he really doesn’t have anything else.

In contrast, we have Louis’ son. Caleb is a young man who seems to have taken his mother’s death in stride and writes off his father’s piety as drunken ramblings, yet he remains just as angry with the world as his dad. Caleb truly is a sad case: He and his dad both have absolutely nothing except for Nell, a beat-up truck and a presumably worthless farm, but Louis at least has his faith. Caleb doesn’t even have that. He’s got absolutely nothing to live for and nothing to sustain himself except love for his sister and his desire to be left alone. Talk about a disaffected youth.

We spend the first act of this movie getting to know and grow attached to these characters. We see them talking with each other, we see them talking to the camera and they all get some sweet moments. Even the two camera operators get some nice character beats. This all culminates in an exorcism which is presented rather like a Penn & Teller routine. It’s all very effective and made to look quite scary, but we’re left to wonder just how much of it is real. Sure enough, the exorcism is intercut with shots that show exactly how Marcus prepares for and performs the illusions that sell the exorcism. The direction and editing really make the scene work.

Then Nell comes back, quite visibly not all right. And this is when shit starts to get real.

Nell is showing quite visible signs of true possession, but mundane — if tenuous — explanations are often close at hand. No, I’m not going to spoil them. Suffice to say that unlike Paranormal Activity or Blair Witch, both of which had primary dangers that were pretty much confirmed to be supernatural from the outset, this movie keeps us completely in the dark and that works to its credit. So much of the horror in this movie is dependent on the things we don’t see and the things we don’t know. What’s more is that unlike the aforementioned movies, which were more or less two-hour setups to a single spectacular punchline, the scares here start with the second act and gradually build in intensity from there.

The second act is also where the movie’s themes really come into focus. When prompted with the possibility that Nell’s possession may be genuine, the chips are well and truly down for Cotton and for Louis. Cotton seems to hold out for modern medicine, insisting that Nell be taken to the police, a hospital and/or psychiatric care until circumstances finally turn him back to God — but even then, he keeps a terrestrial contingency plan ready. As for Louis, he’s forced to choose between his faith and the well-being of his child. It’s no contest: The man would rather put a bullet in his daughter’s brain than let her continue under demonic influence. And he’d rather point the gun at his own head than to think that the possession is less than authentic or that doctors could be of any help whatsoever.

Both men are forced to deal with denial, responsibility, paranoia and where to put their faith. It’s fascinating to watch as Cotton tries to build a bridge between the two, attempting to explain his own anti-religious stance in terms that the religious man can understand and accept. It’s intriguing to contemplate these issues in such a fashion, especially since — as I’ve said before — this is all happening in a place where superstition is king.

And so, at the end of the second act, we get another exorcism. This one goes quite differently and ends with a rather final answer to all the happenings. On the one hand, I thought it was rather anti-climactic and it left a lot unexplained. On the other hand, it very nicely tied in with the movie’s central theme of how we can mistake perfectly natural occurrences for supernatural happenings. How with the right combination of ignorance, willpower and despair, we can see dangers where none exist.

I was wrong. This movie duped me and I freely admit it. In fact, I’m rather proud of the fact that this movie so thoroughly fooled me in this way, as I consider it a sign that I’m still sane. If you successfully predicted the ending to this movie, then I’d love to read the horror novels you could write, just so long as you wrote them in a locked and padded cell.

First, in regard to the ending, I’d like to get something relatively minor out of the way: This is a “found footage” documentary, and the ending leaves a lot of questions as to how this footage was supposedly found. I see absolutely no way that the film shot could ever have found its way into public hands to be edited, scored and distributed professionally as this movie was.

Second, I love Cotton’s last action in the movie. We never see its outcome (I’d personally guess that it ended badly for him), but it’s still a huge step forward for him and a perfect resolution to his arc.

Third is that in case you hadn’t guessed, the last scene is really fucked up. I left the theater shell-shocked, trying to piece together everything that happened and wondering how this ending reconciled with the thematic substance that had come before. At some point, I concluded that the ending establishes all faiths and deities as more or less the same thing: A way to get the comfort, company and an illusion of knowledge that we so desperately need during lonely and uncertain times. Even God and the Devil are just two sides of the same coin, as Cotton Marcus himself points out in the film and in the trailer. I will, however, admit that a lot of this interpretation comes from my own extrapolations on what led the characters up to that point. Your mileage may — and most likely will — vary.

I find it very strange that Eli Roth produced this movie and played such a big part in its advertising, because this movie really isn’t like anything he’s made yet. If you want copious amounts of blood, nudity or mutilations with your so-called “horror”, go watch Piranha 3D (in which Roth himself hoses down bikini-clad women before getting decapitated, by the by). This movie is decidedly PG-13 and its approach to horror is anti-spectacle in every way. The terror is small in scale and dependent entirely on what’s hidden in shadow, behind a locked door or inside someone’s head.

Underneath all of its new and effective ways to scare an audience, The Last Exorcism is a very intellectual movie that focuses far more on conflicting crises of faith than on jump scares. What’s more, the film is very strongly anchored by masterful performances from all the actors involved. This movie deserves to be seen, praised and discussed on its own merit and it sure as hell shouldn’t be dismissed as just another Blair Witch knockoff.