Let me just get this out of the way so I can focus on the rest of the movie: the ending to "The Last Exorcism" is absolutely terrible. It does not matter how "into" the movie you are when it gets to the big finale. The ending comes out of left field and makes no sense with the rest of the movie. The writers took everything they had established and flushed it down the toilet. I guess you could say it is unpredictable, but it is easy to make something unpredictable. The challenge is making an unpredictable twist that fits with the rest of the movie. The ending is the reason this film gets two stars instead of three; however, it is a five-minute chunk of a 90-minute movie, so let us move on.

Cotton Marcus (Patrick Fabian) is a reverend in a long lineage of reverends that preaches the word of God solely to entertain and comfort people. He does not really believe in God and only performs exorcisms to make a buck. Cotton has never encountered a demon, and the only exorcisms he has performed were on people who thought they were possessed when they were only stressed out. To demonstrate this to a film crew, he agrees to visit a man (Louis Herthum) who is convinced his daughter, Nell (Ashley Bell), is possessed by the devil. Marcus starts out performing his usual slew of tricks (playing demonic sounds on an iPod, making the bed shake), but he soon realizes he is dealing with something much more evil and real than he anticipated. Soon all of his lies and fabrications start coming back to haunt him and he finds himself dealing with the consequences.

It is that element of facing the consequences that makes the first 85 minutes of "The Last Exorcism" stand out. Instead of having a reverend with a deep devotion to God, we get this ultimately flawed individual who questions his faith and is not ashamed to pretend in order to make a decent living. His skeptical nature toward the legitimacy of demonic possessions gets him into major hot water as he tries just about everything to help the girl aside from what she needs the most: a real exorcism.

But, like any well-written character, the writers also show a contrasting side to him. Toward the beginning of the film, after Cotton has pretended to exorcise the demon from Nell, he pretends to talk to God and basically tells the alcoholic father that God wants him to stay strong and quit drinking. So yes, Cotton is a swindler, but he also crafts lies to help others. This contrast turns Cotton into a sort of dark horse where you root for the guy despite his flaws.

"The Last Exorcism" also stays engaging thanks to good performances. Patrick Fabian and Louis Herthum are the clear standouts. Both of them deliver performances that are compelling and believable. It was intriguing to see how their characters' perspectives in faith continued to clash against each other throughout the movie, with Cotton being the fake and the father being the true believer.

Ashley Bell also does a decent job as Nell. Before the possession, she is absolutely perfect. I absolutely believed in those moments that Nell was a wonderfully sweet human being who would not hurt a fly. It is when Nell is supposed to be possessed that Bell loses her credibility.

The movie never reaches the level of scary. There are a few decent moments where you find yourself sitting near the edge of your seat, but it never becomes terrifying. This is partly due to Bell's performance, but it also has to do with the fact that the girl never really does anything particularly disturbing. There is one scene toward the end where the demon promises to let the girl go if Cotton shuts up for 10 seconds, and the events that take place after that shook me up a bit. I felt like that was how intense the rest of the horror elements should have been. It is always great when a horror film has a slow build-up, but it also needs to take off at some point. "The Last Exorcism" spends too much time stuck in second gear.

Overall, "The Last Exorcism" kept my interest and I would honestly recommend it if it came with a different ending. But, like I mentioned before, the ending is so random and lazily conceived that it completely takes all of the fun out of the entire moviez. "The Last Exorcism" might be worth a rental, but avoid seeing this in theaters.