Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Damon Thomas
Starring: Elsie Fisher, Amiah Miller, Christopher Lowell, Cathy Ang, Rachel Ogechi Kanu, Clayton Royal Johnson
Good horror-comedies are few and far between. The successful ones tend
to have one thing in common – they look like horror movies rather than
comedies. In the 1930s and '40s, horror-comedies would often be shot on
the same sets and with the same crews as straight horror movies. It's
far more effective to put Abbot & Costello in a monster movie than
to put a monster in an Abbot & Costello movie. The horror-comedy
enjoyed a second heyday in the 1980s. I was just a nipper back then, and
when I first saw movies like An American Werewolf in London, Evil Dead II and Return of the Living Dead, I didn't even think of them as comedies; they were just scary movies
that I later realised were also hilarious. Watch any of those movies
with the sound down and you know you're watching a horror movie. Too
many of today's efforts at combining horror and comedy simply look like
comedies, which makes it difficult to take the horror aspect
seriously.
Directed by Damon Thomas and adapted from a book by
Grady Hendrix (who wrote the recent horror-comedy
Satanic Panic, a movie that almost pulled off the hybrid),
My Best Friend's Exorcism is a horror-comedy that always
resembles a teen comedy, even in its most horrific moments. It's set at
some point in the mid-1980s - for no apparent reason other than
nostalgia and a few catchy pop tunes on the soundtrack – but looks for
all the world like a post-Mean Girls teen comedy from the
2000s.
After being miscast in the most recent
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
reboot,
Eighth Grade
star Elsie Fisher is given a role more suited to her talents.
Once again she's playing a smart but socially awkward high schooler.
It's Middle America at some point in the 1980s and life is pretty good
for best friends Abby (Fisher) and Gretchen (Amiah Miller). The
two are inseparable, spending their weekends and evenings either hanging
out in each other's bedrooms listening to Culture Club or speaking on
the phone. In school they even hold hands while walking through the
corridors, which given they attend a Catholic school in 1980s America,
seems wildly anachronistic.
One Friday night, Abby and Gretchen drop some LSD and venture out into
the woods. There they stumble across a deserted cabin, in which they
have a vision of what appears to be some sort of demonic creature. The
girls put it down to a bad trip, but over the following days Gretchen
begins to exhibit strange behaviour. Breaking off her friendship with
Abby, Gretchen becomes the meanest of mean girls, exploiting her former
friends' weaknesses in the cruelest of fashion. Convinced that Gretchen
has been possessed by a demon, Abby appeals for help from the aptly
named Christian (Christopher Lowell), a mall performer who
integrates Christian teachings with dance moves.
My Best Friend's Exorcism never quite gels its horror and
comedy in an organic fashion. Rather we get a few scenes that could be
taken from any regular teen comedy, only to be interrupted by a scene of
fantastical horror (while never straying visually from its day-glo teen
comedy aesthetic). The teen comedy scenes are quite fun, with Fisher
playing the sort of role she could probably perform in her sleep. Fisher
makes Abby genuinely sympathetic, and we really feel sorry for her when
her friend turns to the dark side. Some fun gags are mined through
leaning into the political incorrectness of the era, mostly courtesy of
a douchebag jock played by Clayton Royal Johnson.
The horror moments may play out in Californian sunshine but are
surprisingly dark, dealing with relatable teenage fears like having your
true sexuality exposed, gaining weight (there's a nice nod to the old
urban legend about diet shakes turning into worms in your stomach) and
losing your friends. The possessed Gretchen is remarkably evil in this
sense, and though nobody is killed they're psychologically wounded in
some disturbing ways. Sometimes things get a little too dark for the
film to handle, with a subplot involving a possible sexual assault
coming off as rather misjudged.
Things run aground in the film's final act, which sees the old exorcism
tropes trotted out once again. Despite the interjection of a comic
figure in Christian, there's nothing here we haven't seen dozens of
times in the decades since William Friedkin's classic. Jaded horror fans
who have seen it all will likely be left dissatisfied by
My Best Friend's Exorcism, but it may prove a successful sleepover watch for younger teenage
girls discovering the delights of the genre.
