“The Last Exorcism Part II” Not Really

“Or Is It?”

“Hotshots” looks at a movie!

The Last Exorcism Part II has a title that makes you think, whereas the movie itself just makes you cringe or laugh, sometimes simultaneously.

Maybe the filmmakers just wanted to cash in on the popularity of the trend in blockbuster series of movies having two parts to the final episode in the series, but the operative word here is “blockbuster,” which this movie isn’t, and neither was its predecessor.

Anyway, this movie is just as confusing as it is silly, and it continues where the first movie left off, which wasn’t called “Part I.”

Once again, we follow the story of Nell Sweetzer, who is 17 years old and living in Louisiana.  Nell is trying to build a new life after escaping the events of the first movie.

Nell is living in New Orleans, and she can’t remember entire portions of the previous months except that she is the last surviving member of her family, and the evil force that once possessed her is back.

In other words, the last exorcism didn’t work, and now it is apparently time for another one.

Or, as a doctor tells Nell, “It’s your life.  You get to decide who you are.”

Nell lives in a house with other troubled teenage girls, who are all under the supervision of the doctor.

Nell has a job as a maid at a motel, where a young man named Chris also works, and they act as if they like each other.

However, strange things start happening to Nell.

A radio talks to her, she answers the telephone, and a strange voice says disturbing things to her.

Nell and the other girls go to watch the Mardi Gras parade, and ominous people in unsettling costumes and masks stare at her, and she also thinks she sees her dead father across the street watching her, but of course he suddenly disappears.

Nell also has disturbing and erotic dreams, and so we never know if what we are watching is supposed to be real or just another one of her dreams.

Eventually Nell meets a woman with special powers who tells Nell that the demon that was in her before loves Nell and wants her.

So, naturally this woman arranges for an exorcism to get the demon out of Nell.

The Last Exorcism Part II … or is it?

I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”