5. The Last Exorcism
Now, this is my last example, but certainly not least. Based on the marketing, I avoided this film like the plague. What a fool I was. I caught it on its home release, and wished I had seen it in the cinema. This is a tight, effective, nasty little horror (not an criticism€). I hope Daniel Stamm directs another film soon, because though I have yet to see his debut, A Necessary Death, which looks fascinating, he has proven himself a damn fine director of an intimate drama that happens to be very creepy and at times very scary. It looked like just another found footage exorcism/demonic possession movie, but it was far more. It was consistently engaging and arguably more unsettling than my previous examples, with the characters (Caleb Landry Jones is the standout) more real than they deserved to be, perhaps the advantage of hiring a documentarian to direct. And the ending was inspired and truly unexpected (for me at least - you may disagree€) A great example of another low-budget, confident and personal horror film that expertly adopts and utilises the found footage subgenre.