Lord, help us all!
Legion: The Final Exorcism (2006)
Directed By: David Heavener
The Prologue
This week MTI Video released a film titled Legion: The Final Exorcism, a film that once was called Costa Chica: Confession of an Exorcist when it was made in 2006. Now exorcism movies these days can be a dime a dozen, but this one is somewhat unique in the fact it has WWE Hall of Famer “Rowdy” Roddy Piper in it. A man who is the self-proclaimed reason Hulk Hogan lost his hair and the man who everyone knows from a little filmed called, They Live! But that was a long time ago, and while it’s always good to see Piper, you kinda hate to see him in another horror movie that doesn’t live up to what the man has been in. It’s fairly easy to pick apart this film here, but I’ll try to have some mercy on it.
The Movie
Tatiana McMurter can’t get along with her “Father”, the good preacher at the local Church. She lives with him and her Mother, her uncle Lucas (“Rowdy” Roddy Piper) is around. But apparently evil is around to as she seems to have become taken over by a demon! This brings her mother to seek out the help of Father Michael San Chica, a man who has had a run in with a demon once before, and it caused the death of his wife and the loss of support from his fellow church members. After all this he has deiced to never perform an exorcism again! However, a father of the church has to do what a father of the church has to do, and if he didn’t we wouldn’t really have a movie now would we?
Well before we get into any of the bad, let me bring up the one good thing about this movie, the editing. I usually never notice this sorta stuff unless it’s just bad, but I’m a fan of the way this movie is edited and it’s overall style, even if at times they edit it together in a way that sorta reminds you of an acid trip. I think they really tried hard to give the film a spooky vibe, and while I do believe they have failed in that department, they at least make it look like they did care. Effort can go a long way in film and you like to see that from someone, even if the acting at times seems to lack it.
Speaking of acting, Roddy Piper is KINDA his usual self here, which isn’t bad. I mean we’ve seen Piper hit every emotion you could imagine while watching wrestling and he channels that here, just not as well at the end of the day as he has before. The role is a role I assume Piper just used to cash a check on and while he’s a great guy in real life and all, I don’t think his heart was into this. I’d go as far as to say I believe he was wrongly cast and underused here. A motivated Piper is a really good thing, but he seems to lack motivation at times here, which is OK since everyone else besides Ariel Teal Toombs, who plays Tatiana, seems to as well. Also check out her father in the film, he sounds like I assume Col.Sanders would sound. And I can’t leave out David Heavener here either, as I believe he’s channeling a LOT of Steven Seagal here..really.
Since the first person p.o.v. film, The Last Exorcism, was released last year. I think it’s safe to say we’ve (for the time being anyway) seen it all when it comes to movies of pretty girls being taken over by demons, a subject I always find generally creepy based on personal beliefs usually, but this movie didn’t creep me out that much. Sadly, this movie doesn’t show us anything more than we usually get in these films besides a demonic pig…YES, a pig. Everything else goes from being a “been there, seen that” scene, to just seemingly killing time. The film drags, characters just walk around and at times randomly disappear for a bit without any reason or even a question from the other characters as to why, and it’s not very dramatic at the end of the day. With that being the case, I’m sorry to say I can’t really recommend this one unless you just love watching Roddy Piper, but don’t look for the same from him either.
The Conclusion
Well..I admit it, it was hard to finish. But that’s (as always) just one man’s opinion. If you’d like to try this one out for yourself, you can get it from MTI, where they have this and a number of other things you might be interested in. I’m sure with this being a film about exorcisms it’ll find a crowd, I’m just not sure how many of that crowd will actually like it.
The Rating (3/10)
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