When The Blair Witch Project appeared on the scene back in 1999 the whole first person / found footage / mock-documentary style was sneered at in many quarters, and viewed -- quite correctly -- as a gimmick used to hide a number of other limitations while selling the budget shortcomings to audiences as a benefit rather than a flaw. It's a feature, not a flaw! And when the gimmick worked -- and worked spectacularly well, I might add -- the only real surprise was that other film makers didn't jump on it sooner. But while the copycats took longer to arrive than expected they did, indeed, arrive and with global successes such as Spanish zombie film [REC] -- remade in the US as Quarantine -- and Paranormal Activity a little closer to home, it's pretty clear that what was once a novelty has taken on a life of its own and become a legitimate sub-genre of its own. And make note of this: In the hands of The Last Exorcism director Daniel Stamm the style ceases to be a gimmick and becomes an integral part of the film itself. Cleverly constructed and captured to film by a very talented cast and crew, the decision to go mock-doc on The Last Exorcism is not just about keeping the budget down but about capturing the essence of what the film is really about in the most effective way. Shoot it differently and you'd have an entirely different and, in my opinion, a much less interesting film.

Because, you see, The Last Exorcism does not just want to scare you. It wants to do that, too, and does so quite well when it chooses to go down that road but there is much more going on here than your typical bump and crash, shock-a-moment film. It's worth knowing that the film was originally titled Cotton, after its lead character Cotton Marcus, and while that's absolutely a crap title for a film it tells you something very important about where its creators originally saw the center of the thing being. The exorcism may be the part of the film that will draw crowds to the theater but it's Cotton who gives this thing some lasting resonance.

Played brilliantly by veteran character actor Patrick Fabian -- you've seen him in one-offs on countless TV shows -- the Reverend Cotton Marcus is a fraud. Raised from childhood to be a preacher of the fire and brimstone variety, one available to roam the country and perform exorcisms for those believed to be demon-possessed, Cotton not only followed the path laid out for him but excelled at it for years. He's intelligent, he's passionate, he's charismatic. He's the sort of person you just immediately want to like and trust and follow. The problem is that late in his career he realized that he didn't really believe anymore. He'd never really believed in the exorcisms as anything other than a sort of placebo for the people who believe in them, performing elaborate rituals for his flock's mental well-being rather than their spiritual well-being, but now he has realized that his entire faith is hollow. And so he sets out, with the help of a documentary crew, to expose his own fraud using the case of young Nell -- a sheltered teenage girl in Louisiana -- as a demonstration of how to fake an exorcism with the full extent of the charade caught on camera. Things do not end up going as he expects.

What plays out in The Last Exorcism is an effective horror picture, true. It brings scares enough to send audiences home happy. But it's also more. On an intimate, character level it is the story of one man caught between faith and reason. On a larger scale it can be seen as an allegory for Red and Blue America, two cultures in one country with radically different beliefs and priorities with both sides casually disregarding the others beliefs at their own peril. The characters are remarkably nuanced, even the minor ones, and the treatment of the underlying issues remarkably balanced and respectful of all positions. There's no pat 'this side good, that side bad' grandstanding here -- all of the players are sincere, all of them may be correct, and all of them are caught up in something far larger than they understand.

The doc format gives the film a remarkable sense of intimacy. It feels like a portrait of actual people, a feeling bolstered both by Stamm's working methods -- he encouraged actor input and improvisation while reportedly shooting scenes as many as twenty or thirty times, until the actors forgot the camera was there -- and the one hundred percent, absolute and complete absence of CGI on screen. If you see it, it's real. I can't remember the last time I saw a genre film that could claim that and it's hard to sum up just how big a difference it can make.

While not a perfect film -- there's a sort of double ending that's going to drive some people crazy -- The Last Exorcism is a damn good one, one that I think is going to find a very well-deserved long term following.