You mother chucks lox at Nell

The Last Exorcism

Crit

Of the various ways this might have ended, director Daniel Stamm chose perhaps the least interesting, but until that point, this is a remarkably intelligent pas de deux between scinece and parascience, genuinely creepy on both fronts. One I'd have skipped but for Jeannette Catsoulis's enthusiastic review in the Times--which, I see now in actually reading the whole thing rather that doing my prescreening spoiler-avoiding sampling, I see shares my distress about the final reel and also answers (maybe) a question I'd wondered about while watching: "According to the press notes [Ashley] Bell’s scenes were achieved entirely without special effects; and by the time this creepumentary trips over its own pounding feet, the debt it owes to its ultra-flexible star will be more than evident." Can we get an "amen" and a "hallelujah" for that?

Trailers

Not surprisingly, a bunch of teeny creepsters, two of them new to me:

• Buried--Dude is buried, dig? Not clear whether there's any actual video footage or whether it's all from subterranean darkness, which certainly would be a way to keep the budget down.
• Saw 3D--Wow, huh?