The Last Exorcism

Reverend Cotton Marcus has spent years performing exorcisms that he knows are staged, using showmanship and practical tricks to convince believers while taking their money. With his faith worn thin, he agrees to let a documentary crew follow him to rural Louisiana, intending to expose demonic possession as superstition and to treat one last case as routine. The family he is called to help, the Sweetzers, has a teenage daughter named Nell, and the farm where they live turns out to be something far removed from the performance he expected.

Daniel Stamm directed the film, his first feature, from a screenplay by Huck Botko and Andrew Gurland; Eli Roth was among the producers. Patrick Fabian plays Cotton, with Ashley Bell as Nell, Iris Bahr as a member of the crew, and Louis Herthum and Caleb Landry Jones as Nell's father and brother. The film was made for about 2 million dollars and took roughly 69 million worldwide, a return that made it a significant success relative to its cost. Audience ratings sit at 5.7 out of 10 on IMDb and the same on TMDB, while critics rated it 6.1 out of 10, a slightly warmer response than that of general viewers.