It's another rip-off from The Asylum, this time trying to mix The Exorcism Of Emily Rose with The Exorcist with The Last Exorcism, and it's another one of their better outings, though not actually a great film.
Much like Paranormal Entity (their rip-off of Paranormal Activity), this movie works because the central concept is pretty solid. It's simply showing an exorcism from footage that the film claims is real. Doctors argue with priests and try to get to the root of the problem as young Anneliese gets worse and worse and things get increasingly dangerous for everyone involved.
I had a quick browse around for information on this movie and couldn't find anything. Not. One. Thing.
Even on the website for The Asylum itself there are no cast or crew members listed and I can only come to the conclusion that they think people in the big wide world will actually believe that the footage shown is real.
Some of the events depicted almost get into scary territory (the lead actress, Nikki Muller, playing Anneliese does her best with the physical side of things and there's a moment of genuine creepiness near the end with Anneliese moving out of a wheelchair to terrorise someone) but things are undermined by the bad acting from the majority of the cast and the terrible German accents.
Without enough detail and authenticity to actually convince as a "real" event, the movie has no major selling point. It also gets quite dull in places because of the many scenes featuring just black backgrounds with actual audio from the real exorcism being played over the top (which you can listen to on YouTube if you're interested) and the many other scenes focusing on nothing more than the priests and doctors arguing over the best way to treat Anneliese. But at least the lo-fi approach helps to gloss over the usual gamut of failings that The Asylum movies usually provide.
5/10.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Paranormal-Entity-The-Exorcist-Tapes/dp/B005DZINAG/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1360779001&sr=8-1-fkmr0
I haven't seen this one, and don't want to, and not just because it's from the Asylum (which is more like the clone factory that hasn't really figured that whole DNA thing out yet).
ReplyDeleteAnneliese Michel was a mentally ill Bavarian woman. Her "exorcism" was, in fact, a vicious, protracted murder by a grotesque gaggle of religious fanatics, her own parents among them. It went on for months. Denied any medical care, she was, at her death, morbidly emaciated, wounded, both her knees broken as a consequence of the hundreds of daily genuflections her tormentors had her perform (and after the knees had been broken, they continued to force her down upon them), she'd been stricken with pneumonia, and, in the end, she'd died of starvation. Literally starved to death. The medical examiners said she could have lived if she'd been given medical treatment right up to a few hours before she died.
THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE, to the extent that it was tied to that case, was inexcusable, offering up the killers' point of view as a reliable recounting of events, presenting the victim as genuinely possessed by demonic forces, and the killers as her benevolent overseers. Poisonous rubbish. I'm guessing this movie goes to the same place, and it even uses the victim's real name.
The whole enterprise is unconscionable.
There's a German flick from a few years ago that tackled the case, in fictionalized form. It's called REQUIEM, and it's pretty good.
Well, I think the dislike of The Asylum is an opinion shared by many (except me, I kinda like their honesty and enjoy their particular brand of low quality schlock) but you're certainly right to think that the real case deserves better treatment.
ReplyDeleteTo be fair, this version actually shows the mistreatment from the priests in a scene when Anneliese is made to genuflect 300 times in an attempt to force her to repent.
And you're completely right in thinking that this movie goes down the possessed route.
Unconscionable. It's like making a movie about the Manson murders where the bizarre fantasies that drove the killers are presented as real.
ReplyDeleteI will say this for the Asylum: it was responsible for one of the biggest, hardest, and most sustained laughs I've ever gotten from a movie.
It was an unintentionally funny moment, of course. It happened when that godawful upbduget Brenda Fraser take of JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH was released. The Asylum, of course, put out their own version (under the same title, I think, or it may have lifted the ERB AT THE EARTH'S CORE). I saw it at a time when I was actually seeing quite a few of their movies, because I had a friend who rented movies based on their cover art, and was always bringing them over. Like all of the Asylum movies, it was barely even watchable, but at one moment, the film's Kick-Ass Heroine cliche, faced with, I believe, a vicious giant spider-critter from the earth's core, raised a knife over her head, said something like "All right, bitch! Let's get it on!" Then, making the goofiest face imaginable, she charged, emitting the most unconvincing war-hoot I'd ever heard. Both my friend and I, who'd been bored out of our minds up to that point, burst into absolutely hysterical laughter. I was barely able to breath. We laughed for a good 10 minutes, then had to rewind it and watch it over again several times. I even thought of buying the movie, just for that moment.
SO the Asylum sucks, but they did give me a good laugh once.
Oh great, now that's another one I MUST see, haha. Cheers
ReplyDeleteThere are now details for this movie listed on IMDb. At last.
ReplyDeleteOh, and as a note to UK DVD buyers, this film has been packaged as Parnormal Entity 3.
ReplyDelete