The Secrets of Emily Blair

If this is a joke, it gets a solid six. If it's a thriller, it gets zero. If it's a horror, well, there's some nasty stuff, so 2 for horror. I enjoyed it. I really did. I just have no idea what it was supposed to be. If a twelve-year-old watched The Exorcist, Deep Space Nine and Rocky back-to-back, wrote a script in three hours and gave it to their 16- year-old sibling doing a movie studies course and SOMEHOW it got though to some movie exec... well, that's this movie.

I am not ever sure why I gave this movie a shot—so many exorcism movies are just retreads of other, better movies. Perhaps it was the length (only about 90 minutes). Perhaps it was a few of the stars, like Colm Meaney, Adrain Paul and Tom Wright—all so very good. Whatever the reason it was a huge waste of time.

I try not to write bad reviews, but this film really was terrible. I kept falling asleep. It was full of action, lots and lots of the possessed star—Ellen Hollman as Emily Blair—acting like a demon and starling and hissing, and lots of gore too. But it was just silly, and despite all the stuff that was going on, I was bored to tears. Even the actors I mentioned above were sub-par, which is sad, because they are such good actors. Maybe it was the directing by Joseph P. Genier? Or was it simply that the script was so bad that no one, not director or stars, could do anything with it? So blasé. So stereotypical. So sensationalistic. Right down to the part where Meaney, as the priest, tells Emily Blair's husband that the church just doesn't do exorcisms anymore.

I wonder how they got Larry Drake—the John Doe of the film in a very small part—to be in this? To do his first film in years? He was actually kind of scary, but he is in and out of the film way too fast for our own good.

Please don't waste your time on this movie. Because it really is a waste of time. How sad.

Besides the bad acting from a few of the actors, the movie was "eh." It started off like any normal horror flick with a few intense sequences and creepy camera angles. But after about 25 minutes, you just stop caring about the characters. They don't react the way a normal person in their situation would and it was kind of annoying.

You know those movies where you expect someone to react in a way and they do the complete opposite? That's kind of how this movie was; just OK.

The makeup team did a great job with the character Emily; she didn't look like the same person by the end of the film.

Overall, this movie could have been a lot better if they worked with the story a little more and had better direction given to the main actor and priest. Other than that, Emily's character was done well.

I am an enormous fan of movies about possession, films about possessed young ladies and exorcism are, for some reason my thing.

I hated this movie, I finished it, but barely, it annoyed and disappointed me at the same time. The reason I titled this review "YOu will not like this movie," is that it seems reasonable that if I don't like this one, you won't either.

I was in the mood to watch a B rated horror film to have on in the background while I was doing other things. This is exactly what I got and it's actually not bad for what it is. Give it a shot.