My Best Friend's Exorcism

 Abby (Elsie Fisher) and Gretchen (Amiah Miller) are BFFs in the eighties. Gretchen gets possessed while visiting a haunted house, some melodrama and mildly comic scares ensue, and then there's an exorcism.

 And some other stuff happens. It's hard to muster enthusiasm to write about a movie like My Best Friend's Exorcism; It's not just that it's not for me, it's not that it's egregiously bad - mostly it's just... basic. Extremely basic. Its target audience might well enjoy it, but I didn't feel it did anything memorable.

 I'd heard good things about Grady Hendrix's book My Best Friend's Exorcism, and was planning to read it with my son. We never did get to it, and now we never will (that sounds ominous! I just meant he's now older than its target audience). Its movie adaptation, unfortunately, reeks of... not low effort, exactly, but there's definitely an utter lack of ambition.

 Visually it's got no energy whatsoever. It's a competently made movie, but it's built out of exactly the types of shots you'd expect for each scene - no imagination, no surprises, no sense of style (director Damon Thomas is, unsurprisingly, a TV guy).  And it relies exclusively and unnecessarily on CGI for effects that could just as easily be achieved practically, which rarely means good things for a horror movie.

 Yes, even the prerequisite projectile vomiting is completely unconvincing.

CGI pea soup. Pazuzu does not approve.

 The script (adapted by Jenna Lamia) is similarly dull: blunt in its messaging, tame in its horror and way too broad in its comedy. I didn't really much care for the acting, either, but the characters are so clichéd and the direction so flat that I wouldn't hold it against any of the actors. It's ostensibly a period piece, but it just looks like a modern movie with 80's signifiers thrown in every now and then - a few feel very forced, and the era doesn't really feel integral to the plot.

 That the horror didn't work for me is OK, that's a me problem: Heightened teen drama is ranked very low in the list of things I can be bothered to give a fuck about. The bulk of the tension is not supernatural, but built around things like social insecurities, fear of betrayal and alienation, and the very relatable fear of losing a friend as Gretchen's possession turns her into a mean girl. But it's all a little too over the top to strike home - the story stacks the cards against the protagonist to a ridiculous degree (an extremely common narrative device in YA fiction I personally can't stand.)

 At least some of the humor is fine: 'Puke and rebuke' might be the best euphemism for an exorcism I've  heard, and there are a couple of solid visual gags and funny lines lurking in the sillier corners of the script. Not a lot, but enough to keep me from tuning out completely. There's also a fundamental sweetness to the two main characters and their friendship, and that might make all the difference in how this movie plays out for you if you're receptive to it. 

 I didn't hate this movie, exactly... And I do feel a little bad for dumping on low-ish budget movie made for an audience that's traditionally very underserved by any type of horror; But what can I say about something like this, a movie entirely built out of safe choices, borrowed elements and polished surfaces? There's hardly anything here for me to latch onto. Content made to back-fill the catalogue of the ever-hungry streaming giants.