Written and directed by Leroy Kincaide in his feature film debut, The Last Rite is a possession film that deals with supernatural entities, exorcisms, precarious romantic relationships, and sleep paralysis. As an added layer, I felt this film also delved deeply into mental issues and childhood trauma, seeing its protagonist manifest past nightmares into existence as a result of her stressful adulthood — a premise that could relate with many. Though The Last Rite has an all too familiar storyline and many different subplots, the script does not seem confused and delivers a solid possession flick, if not typical.

The Last Rite stars Bethan Waller as Lucy, a medical student who has recently moved into a new home with her boyfriend Ben (Johnny Fleming). She soon finds that she is unable to settle in, as she is constantly unsettled by the feeling of someone being in the house with her, and what’s more, the frequent glimpses of the figure of a man wearing a hat, either in the background of pictures or out of the corner of her eye. After being subjected to ominous run-ins with people who seem to know of the entity, she confronts the entity head-on one evening and ends up becoming possessed. Turning to a local priest for help, he is apprehensive of his capabilities at first — and his permission to perform exorcisms — however Father Roberts (Kit Smith) remembers his need to help those who do not have a voice for themselves, and accepts the call to rid Lucy of the paranormal entity

As if the name didn’t already give it away, The Last Rite is an occult horror film, or at least, it is meant to be, however, the fear factor is watered down and the plot is weighed down by a protagonist that doesn’t have chemistry with the love interest nor even the supernatural entity that is following her. I felt that the movie suffered from mediocrity — from the familiar premise of there being an unshakeable entity following an unwitting woman, from the performances that were either too over-the-top with toxic masculinity or forgettable, and the frequent attempts at jumpscares none of which were neither scary nor made me jump. The Last Rite is watchable, certainly, but it is also certain that other low-budget projects such as Paranormal Activity and The Last Exorcism have already done the inescapable-supernatural-entity plot to its fullest potential.

Where The Last Rite does succeed is in its cinematography — the production quality does make the film look as though it was produced in Hollywood, however, it also feels like a copy and paste exorcism movie from other bygone horrors flicks, and may turn out to be a frustrating watch as a result. Also to the film’s credit, the body acting done by Bethan Waller in her role as Lucy was enthralling to watch — she is quite the scream queen and seemed to have no issue capturing the bone-breaking contortions needed to pull off a possession portrayal. She succeeded, and really shined in these scenes, especially while acting in opposition of her exorcist, played by Kit Smith in the role of the compassionate Father Roberts.

The Last Rite is a solid film as far as production value, but it is painfully ordinary and the plot and all of the jumpscares are just as predictable. I did enjoy the body acting and screams during the possession displays, but they were just about the best thing about the movie. There were quite often lulls in the pacing due to the awkward conversations, none of which drew me any closer to the characters enough to care about their well-being — I wasn’t necessarily rooting for the demon to take over, I just wasn’t made to necessarily care about the protagonist plight, and especially not her poorly written love interest.

6.25 out of 10