Marcus Nispel, the director of Exeter, is best known for a slew of remakes: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th, and Conan the Barbarian. Each brought slickness to beloved properties, but little in the way of creativity or soul. Exeter, as an original film, provides a chance for the director to show off what he really brings to the table. But as it turns out, Exeter is just a cobbled together collection of horror movie tropes, stuck together in the same slick, largely soulless package.
Patrick (Kelly Blatz) works for Father Conway (Stephen Lang), who is currently overseeing the dismantling of an abandoned Church property that was once an asylum for mentally disturbed children. Patrick's friends get wind of the property and decide to throw a party there. After much of the reveling is done, Patrick is left in the building with a small group of friends. Drunk and high on drugs, the kids mess around with supernatural rituals, and end up summoning something from beyond this world. Soon, people are dead, and Patrick and his friends are trapped inside the asylum. They have to look for a way out, all while trying to figure out how to deal with possessions and learning the true history behind the place.
The movie is a little bit of everything. It's a possession and exorcism movie mixed with slasher and zombie elements. There's a Ouija board sequence somewhere in the middle, and the suggestion of something demonic at play. And the movie is built entirely on the standard setup of interchangeable dumb kids getting trapped in some location, receiving their karmic comeuppance for listening to loud music, doing drugs and having sex.
The difference comes in the treatment. The film seems to aim for irreverence. The exorcism, for example, is performed based on instructions from a website, with accompanying graphics that make the ritual seem much less serious than it is. Bouts of extreme, almost comic violence further the film's flippant attitude. It's an intriguing, but it amounts to little in the end. There's no real subversion here: the movie is sticking to a pretty standard twist narrative, revealing dark secrets that really might have benefitted from a more serious take.
The production is solid enough. It's a slick movie, certainly, with a defined visual palette and strong production design. Aggressive editing keeps things moving, though it does lessen the possibility of actually getting scared with anything that happens on screen. The film kind of comes alive with the violence, with a good mix of effects cresting some genuinely disturbing visuals. Acting is all over the place, but that was going to be a given. None of these roles are worth the effort anyway.
To its credit, Exeter does keep the audience guessing. It's so stuffed with different elements that it's hard to tell exactly what's going to happen next. The problem is that it's equally difficult to care about what's going to happen next. Exeter is all about the trappings of the modern horror movie the easily recognizable elements meant to attract the casual viewer. There's a possession, and exorcism, a Ouija board, and whatever else. What's missing is a soul, or anything that's actually worth caring about. The film is just a bunch of things happening, with nothing substantial holding any of it together.
My Rating:
