Horror Movie Review: Exorcist: House of Evil (2016)

Exorcist: House Of Evil tries a number of dirty tricks to get your attention. The first is its crass attempts to link itself with the seminal horror classic, The Exorcist. If the title wasn’t bad enough, you have the DVD cover & the extremely suspect marketing tagline of it being shot in the ‘authentic’ Exorcist house. This refers to the ‘supposed’ exorcism of Ronald Doe in 1949. An incident that inspired William Peter Blatty to write The Exorcist.

It should be noted that Ronald Doe’s exorcism actually took place in the Georgetown University Hospital. Not his family home.

Exorcist: House Of Evil also claims to have captured real paranormal activity, both audible & visible. Both of which has been left in the film. Right, sure…

Written, produced & directed by David Trotti, this was his first feature film & it shows. Devious marketing aside, Exorcist: House of Evil is an awful film that looks & sounds cheap, has much suspect acting & provides nothing in the way of tension or scares.

Opening with the botched exorcism of a young boy, a young priest named Halloran has his faith tested.

The movie then jumps in time to the present day where we meet Amy (Amy Holland Pernall). A young woman who wishes to move back into her family home against the wishes of her cousin, Gordon (Conner Trinneer). He is very mysterious about it but she is insistent as she wants to start a new life with her partner, Luke (Mark Holzum).

Not long after moving in strange events begin to occur. Events such as things moving of their own accord. Amy then starts to have dark dreams & the longer she remains in the house the more oppressive it begins to feel.

She begins to realise that her family’s past in this house has something to do with the strange events occurring in her life now so sets out to solve the mystery.

Meanwhile, Father Halloran is still haunted by the exorcism that took place when he was a young child so when Amy comes to him; he feels duty bound to help her.

Blah, blah, blah…stop me if any of this sounds familiar.

So clichéd, so run of the mill and so embarrassingly tepid throughout its entire run. If it’s not putting you to sleep with its boring story, it’s reminding you of far better movies. It is not scary, not in the slightest. Instead it desperately tries to appeal to the lowest common denominator of horror by employing the ‘loud noises’ gimmick to try & make the viewer jump.

By time it reaches its exorcism finale, it’s unlikely that you’ll care one bit about the end result. At best you can say is that it has some decent effects involving ‘black eyes’. Not bad for a 90-minute movie.

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