Director: Steven R Monroe
Writer: Matt Venne (Screenplay)
Starring: Sarah Lind, Devon Sawa, Gina Holden, Peter MacNeill, Daina Leitold
Plot: Taking place years after The Haunting of Molly Hartley, who now, as an adult, has fallen under the possession of an evil spirit and must be exorcised by a fallen priest before the devil completely takes her.
There may be spoilers the rest of the review
Verdict: Extreme Exorcism
Story: The Exorcism of Molly Hartley starts as we see how young priest Father John Barrow (Sawa) gets led astray during an exorcism, disgraced and banned from the practice. Moving onto meeting Molly Hartley (Lind) celebrating her 24th birthday with a promotion to partner with friends.
When the partying gets out of hand Molly wakes up to two dead bodies with the police ready to arrest her and Molly becoming possessed. Moly finds herself in a religious mental home, the same one where Father Barrow is trying to redeem himself.
Dr Laurie Hawthorne (Holden) tries to treat Molly which includes looking into her past and a previous possession, the only option Laurie can find is to turn to Father Barrow to perform an exorcism inside the mental asylum.
Thoughts on The Exorcism of Molly Hartley
Characters/Performance – Molly is the over successful woman in business who finds herself possessed thanks to her past, that seems like all we learn about her. Father Barrow is a priest who wants to make up for his error in a previous exorcism. Dr Hawthorne is just the doctor trying to get to the bottom of what could be wrong with Molly.
Performance wise, well this is going to be fun, first Sarah Lind just seems to follow every textbook on what an exorcism could look like and nothing more, Devon Sawa at least puts some effort in but doesn’t reach his Final Destination level. Gina Holden also seems to disappear part the way through this film.
Story – Exorcism stories are always going to be hard because let’s face it The Exorcist is the granddaddy of them all, so everything just feels like it is trying to keep things up to that level without ever being able too. This story does keep the traditional exorcism routine while trying to balance the idea that she could just be an unstable woman, but sadly this does just fall into the mix of been here seen this, the main reason why I am not the biggest fan of the exorcism sub-genre.
Horror – Do you find exorcism scary, well if the answer is yes then you should get the horror elements out of this, if no you won’t get anything from the horror side of the film.
Settings – The film is set mostly in a mental asylum which does give us a fresh idea of how to treat an exorcism but it doesn’t look into the doctor treatment with this location.
Special Effects – We have basic special effects for horror but not much is needed for the film.
Final Thoughts – I personally don’t find many exorcism films scary so for me this just didn’t hit the horror marks for me
Overall: Simple exorcism film that isn’t memorable enough.
Rating
