L'exorcisme de ma meilleure amie

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.

I thought this was okay but nothing memorable. I loved the book which was fun and retro but also genuinely creepy. The film didn't capture the essence of the book for me, or if it did it was a watered down version that was lacklustre. Everything these days seems to be trying to be a Stranger Things, or at least that's how it feels. This film just didn't feel that fresh and also wasn't remotely scary which was missing the point. Also, who was the target market as it felt YA? The book was about teens but definitely an adult read. I think it could have been so much more, like why not be a full on campy horror like Drag Me To Hell or just something that would be a fun ride. Not just another retro teen story.

'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.

I was hoping that the first film adaptation of a Grady Hendrix work would be awesome, in spite of the bad reviews. But this veers so wildly from the source material that it might as well have changed the title and inserted an "inspired by" credit.

The whole point of the novel was that it was Abby and Gretchen together against the world until all of this started. Giving them more outside connections dilutes that, and the filmmakers did nothing to help reestablish that connection while also adding new characters.

I'm disappointed. I hope that the failure of this won't prevent other Hendrix novels from being adapted; hopefully, by better hands.

"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.