My Best Friend's Exorcism

A great premise and a good book. Could have been Booksmart meets The Exorcist. But Elsie Fisher is awful as Abigail which torpedos most of the film's promise and none of the cast are helped by a very lazy and poorly crafted script. The whole films feel very rushed, there's no connection to the main characters as most of the back story and bonding has been ditched I'm favour of getting to the horror elements faster. Which leads to the final strike against this film, in that it's about as scary as an episode of Scooby Doo. Constantly shifting in time between young teen/family friendly and adult. It just never really knows what it's doing. Amiah Miller does however deliver a good performance despite the bad material and myopic direction she's been given.

'My Best Friend's Exorcism' is a horror/comedy that isn't horrifying and isn't funny. In fact it never even really feels like it is trying to be either of those things. I can think of only a small handful of times where the film attempts to get a laugh, and it never comes off. And the horror side of things is more just nastiness than anything else.

I don't really know who this film is targeted at. It isn't fun enough to be for kids. But it is nowhere near dark enough to be aimed at adults. It seems to fall into an awkward middle ground.

The characters are incredibly bland. They aren't funny or clever or sexy or inspiring. No energy is spent building them into anything at all. Every one of them could basically be the same person.

Without spoiling anything, there is a decision made at the end of the movie to show something quite important. I can't stress how bad of a decision this was. What isn't seen is always infinitely more scary than what is seen. This did not look good and was a final nail in the coffin for this film.

The only redeeming factor I can find is that some good song choices were used. Otherwise though this was a misfire. 3/10.

Overall: My Best Friend's Exorcism is lightweight and fun, with a few great moments, but it felt a little bland during some sections. It was worth watching, but it's pretty average.

I wanted to like this a lot more than I do because they got some stuff *so* right, but overall it felt pretty lackluster for most of the film. I think it's a solid 5.5/10 and if they had made some of it a little less generic it could have easily hit a 7 with the things they did right.

The good: They have a couple of awesome scenes/effects that got me. They've got some good jokes. They have a fun tertiary character, but unfortunately don't use him enough. The production quality is great, all the actors seemed ok, and the overall tone is quite fun.

The not-so good: They spend a lot of time slowly panning through bland scenes and not adding to the film. They don't have quite enough characterization outside of "these girls are quirky friends", "these girls are shallow bullies", and "these jocks are soooo mean". They didn't lean in enough with the side characters and some of the more interesting bits, and spent a lot of time on cookie-cutter stuff that wasn't memorable.

Its a take on my generations typical scare genre, a case of excorsism, devilworship and girls coming of age flirting with the ouija board, at a pyjamaparty when caretakers takes a late night bartrip, and leaves the teen alone at home.

Its also a sting of irony on the issues of sexuality, elaborating anorexia, in a more or less sugarfree story, with not much above average acting from well known female cast, and as innocent pupils of a catholic high school they swear unreasonably far too much.

The dressing code and script is without doubt written and sewn together by people that hasnt lived through the 80's, the best hit must be the dedicated musical score and a few moments of real fright but not enough for a grumpy old man like me. It might as well stay outta the silverscreen theaters because it lacks the heart and mind of the 80's.

"My Best Friend's Exorcism" is a light horror-comedy film, based on the novel of the same name, but when it is adapted to a screenplay, it does not achieve the expected charm. The film starts well by showing us conventional teenagers with their typical age problems but in the course of its duration everything becomes ridiculous, the comic dialogues go from funny to repetitive and unfunny, the horror elements also have a good start until they disappear. The actors do their job, the costume and hair design are good, they transport you to the eighties, but the digital effects are terrible as if they came from a cheap television movie of the '00s. The end result is a film that catches and then turns stupid with the occasional salvageable scene.