'The Expedition' is a decent 'faux documentary'

The Expedition (2006)
Starring: Anthony Cortese, Norman McIsaac, Nigel Hartwell, Bill Lucas, Jessica Brant, and Tom Kring
Director: Nigel Hartwell
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

Five young filmmakers (Brant, Cortese, Hartwell, Kring and Lucas) sneak into a massive decaying structure that once housed an asylum in Saratoga County on October 31, 2004, with the intent of getting footage for a documentary. One of their number never emerged.

"The Expedition" is one of several films I've seen that tries to capture that one-time fluke that was "The Blair Witch Project" and it's one of the best attempts so far. The acting is very naturalistic and believable--better perhaps than it was even in "Blair Witch" as the characters here are a less prone to go straight for the hystrionics--and the whole set-up from beginning to end is very believable.

Unfortunately, the film suffers from some serious pacing issues. Entirely too much time is spent showing the characters wandering from decaying room to decaying room and meandering up stair wells and down hallways without much happening except idle chatter. Whenever something DOES happen, it's well done and often subtle... but then it's followed by more meandering, because the characters don't notice the strange thing that happened. (The camera catches it but they don't.)

The upshot is that the ends up being realistic on another level: It captures the real feeling of being on a film shoot... insofaras if you're not invovled in something that's going on at the time, it's almost as boring as watching paint dry.

There's the further problem that director Hartwell has a massive building to play with as far as staging his film, but he seems to only use the same few rooms and hallways as the film unfolds. If there had been a little more variation in the environment, the film might have been a little more exciting, although the biggest problem really is the pace. With a running time approaching two hours, "The Expedition" is in need of some serious trimming, perhaps losing as much as 10 or 15 minutes of running time.

'The Last Exorcism' all but ruined by ending

The Last Exorcism (2010)
Starring: Patrick Fabian, Ashley Bell, and Louis Herthum
Director: Daniel Stamm
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

A professional minister and exorcist who has lost his faith in God (Fabian) cooperates with the making a documentary intended to expose exorcists and exorcisms as the frauds they are. However, with a two-person film crew in tow, he comes face to face with a girl (Bell) who may truly be possessed by a demon.


"The Last Exorcism" is, for most of its running time, a well-executed horror film in the "Paranormal" or "The Blair Witch Project" mode. The documentary feel is scrupulously maintained, and there's nothing shown in the film that couldn't have been captured by the camera carried by the documentary filmmaker. The script is lean, tightly focused, and it sets up everything that occurs in the picture nicely.

The film also benefits from a main character, Reverend Cotton Marcus, who, despite admitting up front to having turned from preacher to conman and trickster, is a sympathetic throughout. Even better, Cotton Marcus is a character who has a conscience and a heart--and perhaps more faith left in God than he realizes--and he tries his best to help a young girl in serious trouble, first exploring every possible logical explanation for her condition... and ultimately exploring supernatural ones. He transformation from huckster to hero that Marcus undergoes makes him a character that the audience is rooting for more strongly than most horror movie characters. Of course, it helps immensely that Patrick Fabian is perfectly cast in the part.

Also perfectly cast is Ashley Bell. She's in her mid-20s, but she nonetheless passes just fine as the 16-year-old she is playing. She also shows that maybe she is being wasted in the primarily voice acting roles she's played up to this point, as she is fabulous as Nell, being equally sweet, sinister, or absolutely bat-shit crazy depending on what is called for vis-a-vis portraying a girl who might be demonically possessed. Louis Herthum as her deeply Christian father is likewise excellent in his part, seeming likeable but with just enough of an edge that the audience can buy into the suspicions that start to form around him halfway through the film.


Unfortunately, all that is good about "The Last Exorcism" is undermined by its absolutely awful ending. It's an ending that's carefully set up as the film unfolds, and it's to be expected given the genre and the general tend for horror movies to be home to various degrees of irony and "poetic justice", but in this specific case the ending destroys the carefully constructed illusion that we're watching a documentary. As the end credits start to roll, even the most unquestioning and generous-minded viewer will be asking with some irritation, "Given what just happened... who made the movie?"

I don't know if this was the filmmakers intent, but what they ended up doing was the modern-day equavenent of the ending on "The Mark of the Vampire" or "The Ghoul" where the 1930s filmmakers ended their films by reassuring audiences that there is no such thing as the supernatural. With "The Last Exorcism," the filmmakers do the same by completely destroying the pretense that everything we've just seen unfold on film was just so much make-believe, reassuring us that there is no such thing as the supernatural. However, in the case of the classic horror films, the entirety of what had been built up was not swept away as it is here.

If "The Last Exorcism" has been five-ten minutes shorter and/or given an ending that was in keeping with the illusion of reality the film had set up--even if that ending involved demons taking on physical form--this could have been a great horror movie. Instead, it ends up barely rating as average.

'Behind the Mask' is an excellent slasher mockumentary

Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (2007)
Starring: Nathan Baesel, Angela Goethas, Kate Lang Johnson, Britain Spellings, Ben Place, Scott Wilson, and Robert Englund
Director: Scott Glosserman
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

Journalism grad students Taylor (Goethas), Todd (Spellings),and Doug (Pace) are invited to do a documentary on the secret world and culture of the artful serial killer, like Jason Vorhees, Michael Myers, and Freddy Krueger and to follow the preparations and first mass-murder of teens at a forbidden, drunken party as young Leslie Vernon (Baesel) makes his first big debut.


"Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon" is part mockumentary, part slasher flick. It's like a Christopher Guest and Wes Craven film got fed into the apple-presser featured in one scene of the film, and out came a singular work. It is not a film for everyone... in fact, I think you need to fit the description of "having seen entirely too many slasher-films" in order to truly enjoy this film.

The first two-thirds of the film pokes fun at journalists, artists, and the slasher-film genre in equal parts. I had a constant smile on my face, as the film created a world where Michael Myers is actually a sort of performance artist who exists in a subculture that is devoted to being the monsters of the modern age. The explanations and rationalizations of the "rules" of the slasher-flick are hilarious when they are coming from a "professional" like Vernon... and they're even funnier when he discusses his workout routine and how hard it is to look like he's walking when he's really running to keep up wiht terrified victims. The final third... well, I don't really want to say what happens in the final third, because it might ruin effect of it. (I came to this film not at all knowing whatto expect, and, while the twist and what unfolds held no real surprise, it was so expertly handled that I enjoyed it immensely.)

Director Scott Glosserman (who also co-wrote the script) exhibits a keen sense for just when to cut a scene for maximum comedic or emotional impact. The interview that ends with the awkward silence when Taylor asks Vernon if he is pro-life is hilarious. The transition between the first part of the film and the second part was also so expertly and artfully handled that it made me wish that more filmmakers had the sort of talent that Glosserman shows here.)

As for the cast, they all do an okay job, but four actors in particular shined. First, there is Nathan Baesel, who is wonderful as the charming, boyish, soon-to-be mass-murderer who walks the filmmakers through the basics of what it takes to be a legendary serial butcher in the modern world... if someone more sinister, or without the sort of comic timing that he displays here, the film wouldn't have been nearly as funny. Second, there's Angela Goethas, who plays a great "straightman" to Baesel for most of the film while subtlely capturing Taylor's growing unease with what she is witnessing. Third, there is Kate Lang Johnson, who does a fine turn as Vernon's chosen "Survivor Girl"--the virginal blonde who will be transformed from victim to fierce fighter and thus square off against him in a final battle of good against evil. Johnson has some truly great moments and even better lines in the final third of the film. Lastly, but far from least, there is Robert Englund, who, in a small but crucial role, takes a nice turn as a Dr. Loomis sort-of character... the gun-toting, topcoat wearing hunter of the evil who is Leslie Vernon.


"Behind the Mask" may be a send-up of the slasher-genre, but it is one that was done with evident love, respect, and great creativity. It is a far more effective film than any recent "serious" entries in the genre have been. It is a film that I think any old-time fan of slasher-films should seek out, because I guarentee you will enjoy it.