With the release date for just a couple of months away, the viral campaign for the Eli Roth-produced horror film “The Last Exorcism” has begun.
Yesterday in our inbox, we received a pleasant note to go check out the website of The Church Of St. Marks, presided over by Reverend Cotton Marcus (the lead character of the film). It’s a pretty clever and thorough piece of marketing, with site built like you would expect one to look like, for any standard, southern church – complete with a blog, links to buy religious material and videos on exorcism and demon possession. It doesn’t really want to make us see the movie (which looks like one part “The Blair Witch Project” and fifteen parts of “every-exorcism-movie-you-have-ever-seen”), but as a bit of online collateral for the film, it’s not too bad. If you’re curious about what the film is exactly about, here’s the synopsis from the Facebook page:
When he arrives on the rural Louisiana farm of Louis Sweetzer, the Reverend Cotton Marcus expects to perform just another routine “exorcism” on a disturbed religious fanatic. An earnest fundamentalist, Sweetzer has contacted the charismatic preacher as a last resort, certain his teenage daughter Nell is possessed by a demon who must be exorcized before their terrifying ordeal ends in unimaginable tragedy.
Buckling under the weight of his conscience after years of parting desperate believers with their money, Cotton and his crew plan to film a confessionary documentary of this, his last exorcism. But upon arriving at the already blood drenched family farm, it is soon clear that nothing could have prepared him for the true evil he encounters there. Now, too late to turn back, Reverend Marcus’ own beliefs are shaken to the core when he and his crew must find a way to save Nell – and themselves – before it is too late.
The PG-13 horror film will hit theaters on August 27th. The trailer for the film is below.
