From a Little Scare to a Big Laugh

Rating: 2/10 (1 March 2015)

Having read some reviews previous to seeing this movie I was led to expect a really good old-fashioned scary time. And it WAS a bit scary at times in the first half but as the film progressed it became more and more silly, so that in the second half it became more of a 'make funny comments and have a laugh' experience.
One of the funniest moments is when the husband guy is looking through a hole in the wall and he's supposed to be really frightened but he just looks a bit worried, and with his pudding basin haircut and dumb expression he so reminded me of Lou Costello in that monster spoof movie that I burst out laughing. Actually Costello was better at pretending to be frightened than this guy, Livingstone, or whatever his name is.
Also funny is the bit where in the middle of intense action the husband shouts: "We have to get her to the priest, for the exorcism!" as if the audience had forgotten by that point and needed to be reminded. That made us laugh a lot!
Funniest of all is how you're supposed to buy all the cod religion/psychology stuff spouted by Warren, the so-called ghost expert. And that the premise is that "only a real Catholic priest" has the ability to drive a demon out of a person! So when the guy's wife is possessed and being super-nasty Warren says "I'll have to do it myself." And the husband guy, who is NOT religious, says: "but you're not a proper priest!" And then this Warren guy takes a bible and starts reading some stuff. And it's in Latin! Like, it HAS to be Latin or it won't work! But he's crap at reading Latin. Oh man! I was expecting the demon to say, like: "Give me a break! I'm not getting out of this person for that crappy Latin!"
This film was not scary and you can not take it seriously, especially the finale, which is really over the top and ludicrous. Near the end the possessed woman is tied to a chair with a blanket over her head (because she bit someone) and then, in an attempt by the director to make it exciting, the chair rises from the floor and turns upside down and wiggles about. This also made us laugh a lot. And then the chair falls down but instead of the woman falling on her head, it does a neat little flip at the last moment and she lands on her back! This is because the happy ending requires her to stay intact so she can be dispossessed (?) unpossessed (?) depossessed (?) and return to being a good old swell American mom.
Another daft thing is how the ghost-hunter guy, even though his wife is messed-up from helping people get rid of demons, and even though they have a young daughter, still he insists on keeping a room filled with demon-infested objects. And a guy comes to visit and says, very intelligently: "why don't you take all this stuff to the incinerator?" and this Warren guy comes up with some total bullshit about "burning it doesn't get rid of the demons". So instead he keeps all of it like a junk shop from hell in his own house!!
I can't be bothered to write more about this film now. Thanks for reading!