Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Last Rite’ on Hulu, a Horror Story of Possession and Exorcism That’s a Pazu-Snooze

Another day, another nice lady gets her mind occupied by a demonic entity, in The Last Rite, now on Hulu. This Australian horror-drama tells a story of a BF and GF who are kind of on the rocks and might need a little couples therapy, but they definitely don’t need a shadow-being being one of the things coming between them – a shadow-being who may just need to get hella exorcised right outta there, which implies that he’s maybe a demon. So is he our old pal Pazuzu, you know, Pazooz, Pazoozes, the Pazoozmeister General? Dunno, but he strikes a pose like good ol’ home invader Babadook, Babs, the Dook, the Duke of Dookington, Dook Dook Dook Dook of Earl Dook of Earl. Now let’s see if this movie has an original thought bumping around in its skull.

‘THE LAST RITE’: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: A priest preps his paraphernalia, probably for something less fun than a blessing or confessional. Elsewhere in the house, a worried man sits at the counter, possibly praying, it’s hard to tell. THUMP THUMP THUMP goes something upstairs, and you get the feeling it’s something more than a kitten chasing a feather. The priest heads upstairs and the camera stares at an abstract painting of a black hole or an icy void of some type, the perfect kind of art that really warms up a place. FLASHBACK TO some days previous. Lucy (Bethan Waller) and Ben (Johnny Fleming) seem like a nice couple – she’s working on her dissertation and he’s an art broker, which might explain the paintings in their house that seem of a series of nothingnesses that thematically match the void up in the hallway. They live in a nice enough place, but it could maybe use a little warming up; may I suggest a LIVE LAUGH LOVE placard or something extolling the virtues of coffee?

It ain’t a portrait of bliss, though. Ben’s stressed out by his work, enough so, he turns down an offer to kershtoink up in the bedroom. Then Lucy starts waking up at the same time every wee hour of every night, as documented by their muy retro clock with the flipping numbers. She’s alone a lot during the day; at this point, it has been established that they don’t have Only A Cat, so the thumping noises coming from other rooms are rather curious. A crow slams into the window and leaves a bloody smear down the glass. The three-aught-whatever a.m. awakenings get more intense. And she starts seeing a shadowy figure, trenchcoated, with a wide-brim hat, lurking in the yard, in the windows, in the background of a selfie. She goes out for a drink with a friend and while washing up in the washroom, a strange sunken-eyed woman approaches her and says, “You have seen him?” and then is never seen or heard from again in this movie, and that’s why I like to call this character The Extraneous Woman.

Lucy tries to talk to Ben about all the strange things happening, and he’s a complete arsehole about it – angry at the insinuation that his neato house might be haunted, or just aggressively angry for no reason. All that art brokering is taking its toll on this guy. She talks to a doctor about the sleep disturbances and maybe the possibility that she’s losing her shizz, and he just throws a prescription at her. So Lucy gets desperate and starts Googling around about the Man In The Hat, finds a man who authored a book about the phenomenon, visits him, learns he’s not a particularly sociable chap, and never sees or hears from him again, which is why I like to call this character The Extraneous Author. Then she gets REALLY desperate and calls a priest, who is the same priest we saw at the beginning of the movie that’s also the turning point in the story, and his name is Father Roberts (Kit Smith), and one wonders if his exorcism license is current. One of the common threads among the advice Lucy’s given by those convinced The Man In The Hat is a non-corporeal phenomenon is “Don’t let him in,” but if she didn’t, this wouldn’t be much of a horror movie then, would it?

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The Last Rite would really appreciate it if you compared it to The Exorcist and The Babadook, but the reality pie here is, it’s more along the lines of The Exorcism of Emily Rose.

Performance Worth Watching: Waller shifts from an earnest characterization of Lucy to having a lot of fun drooling, hissing, howling and contorting while wearing panda-eye black metal makeup.

Memorable Dialogue: Lucy consults the priest:

Lucy: My head doesn’t feel like me anymore. Night feels like day and day feels like night.

Fr. Roberts: Have you tried prayer?

Trombone: Womp wommmmmp

Sex and Skin: Lucy takes a bath but you don’t really see anything.

Our Take: So is Lucy a believer? Is Ben a skeptic? Who knows, and without any real solid ground beneath these characters, it’s hard to be invested in their dilemma, riddled as it is with red herrings: The lady in the washroom, the writer guy, the paintings, the crow – all things of ominous portent that function as little more than plot hoops for the characters to jump through. They’re also cliches, and writer/director Leroy Kincaide marinates in them, taking his sweet time working his way from one overly familiar scene to the next, deploying the same old jump scares, crackity-bones sound effects (CRACKITY-CRACKITY CRACKITY BONES!) and instances of characters… walking… slowly… through… the house, although one could at least argue that such moments allow us plenty of time to admire all the bleak-ass monochromatic nihilistic art on the walls, and you’ll wonder if Ben brokered himself a deal to get those paintings at deep discount.

The Man In The Hat is pretty much a MacGuffin, leaving us seeking a toehold for our emotional investment in Lucy’s well-being and the state of her relationship with Ben. The former finds more emotional purchase than the latter, as Waller works hard to render Lucy a sympathetic figure. (Some advice for Lucy: If you ever get the malevolent entity outta yer noggin, dump the guy.) Yet the screenplay fails her, giving the character a psychological backstory so skimpy, a Victoria’s Secret model could wear it for a catalog shoot.

The narrative really bottoms out in the third act as Kincaide moves away from Lucy for a chunk of time and subjects us to pancake-flat scenes of Fr. Roberts trying his damnedest to work his way through Catholic bureaucracy and get permission to cast out the fiend and send it back to the pits of Hell. Two full days pass as he consults superiors and an old friend and tries to get the bishop on the line, and if we’re supposed to be held in suspense, it fails, because all we can do is wonder what’s happening to Lucy back home, in the throes of unholy dominion. Apparently, time isn’t of the essence, unless you’re considering wasting your precious time watching this movie.

Our Call: The Last Rite is in full thrall to the demons of far too many possession yarns before it. It’s a Pazu-snooze. SKIP IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.

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