When I stumbled upon this 2021 horror from writer and director Leroy Kincaide, I wasn't really harboring much of any hopes or expectations for the movie, given the movie rather low rating on IMDb. So I sat down to watch the movie, figuring that it would probably just be another run-of-the-mill and a dime-a-dozen possession movies.
But still, as I hadn't already seen "The Last Rite", and I do believe in giving a movie a fair chance, of course I opted to watch it and see what Leroy Kincaide had to offer.
I will say that "The Last Rite" had some interesting enough elements to it. I liked the concept of the shadowed entity with the hat, though I couldn't help drawing parallels to Reverend Henry Kane from "Poltergeist II: The Other Side".
The acting performances in the movie were good enough, for the most parts. Bethan Walker (playing Lucy), Kit Smith (playing Father Roberts) and David Kerr (playing Dr. Andrews) definitely put on good performances, while Johnny Fleming (playing Ben) definitely left me wanting more of proper acting on the screen) for someone in a secondary lead role.
But now comes all the bad things about "The Last Rite" and all of its shortcomings. The movie was slow paced, so insanely and unbearably slow paced. After having sat through what literally felt like 90 minutes of movie, I checked the timer on the player and to my dread saw that only 34 minutes had passed of watching the movie. So this was going to be a drag of a movie, and believe me, it was.
And not a whole lot is actually going on to make "The Last Rite" an outstanding movie from the numerous other movies of the same genre that proved to be more enjoyable and entertaining than Leroy Kincaide could muster to deliver. The director drew on the generic tropes of the possession and haunting genre, which made "The Last Rite" bland and generic. I mean, you have things like a door opening and closing on its own, drawers and cubboards opening by themselves, a quilt slowly being pulled down while the person is laying in bed, and such stuff. All things that have been done and seen countless times before.
As for the scare factor and for "The Last Rite" being a horror movie. Yeah, this was a mere stroll in the park. Exactly, the movie was too generic and predictable to be scary. Sure, there were a good atmosphere being built up in the movie, so writer and director Leroy Kincaide definitely managed that. But it was by no means scary.
The ending of the movie definitely was predictable and it wasn't an ending that left the movie complete. So after having suffered 1 hour and 47 minutes of slow torture, the ending was just a final slap in the face before the end credits.
If you enjoy horror movies and demonic possession movies, then "The Last Rite" is not worth the time, money or effort. And this is not a movie that I would recommend you sit down to watch, nor is it a movie that I will ever return to watch a second time.
My rating of "The Last Rite" lands on a very generous three out of ten stars.
