Why not?
The Exorcism of Molly Hartley came out a while ago, and has received middling ratings. It is a sequel to a movie I have never seen, so who knows what I am missing. I do tend to enjoy good ol’ exorcism stories, so I gave this one a shot. I’d watch something newer, but this year has been lacking in horror films overall so far. Granted, this might change with October right around the corner.
May as well come out with it: this movie kind of sucks. By kind of sucks, I mean it isn’t quite as bad as I imagine an intestinal worm to be, but it is still pretty bad. We kind of have a split story between a priest who is sent to mental asylum after dicking up an exorcism and our titular character. The tone between these two segments is off putting due to it being all over the place. Hartley is a hip young gal who is the youngest to become partner at her firm (I am not sure they ever reveal what this firm does, so I assume it makes cat food).
The movie seems to think it is edgy, scary, and sexy, but it feels cheap and gratuitous at best. It doesn’t help that the music is absurdly annoying throughout the entire film. The characters are dumb, the drama is forced, the scares are lackluster, and the writing is bad.
We have characters and events that are slapped together with an overabundance of writing convenience. By that I mean there are simply too many things that defy basic logic to make the film enjoyable. The sad thing is that horror fans are quite forgiving when it comes to ridiculous plots—pushing us to disbelief shouldn’t be a goal from these writers.
So Molly has had a long incubation of the devil due to the events of the first film. Now possessed, it looks like her partnership at the firm might be jeopardized. Sure, she also kills a couple people, but I think we are all more concerned with this young lady’s career. The market is tough out there, people!
Of course our disgraced priest will be drawn back in, because apparently the Catholic Church is a lot like the mafia. The film probably would have been okay if it was just going for more of tongue-in-cheek splatter horror, but it wants to think that it is something much deeper. I am not certain what they are striving for—cheap sex and offensive stereotypes about the mentally ill are about as edgy in 2015 as a clogged toilet. Sprinkle in not only poorly written, but truly awful and un-redemptive characters and we get this stinker.
The bummer of this film is that it is truly an exceptional waste of time. Exorcism movies usually aren’t great, but they can generally at least be entertaining. This one wants to sprinkle in about as much edgy crap as it can think of, which not only makes the movie a muddled mess, it also makes it run a lot longer passed what should have been the logical end point. 0/10
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