Crew
Director/Screenplay – Nick G. Miller, Story – Matthew Ashford, Nick G. Miller & David Michael Ross, Producers – Matthew Ashford, Ray W. Keziah, John Mullis & David Michael Ross, Production Design – John Mullis. Production Company – NGM Entertainment/Echelon Studios.
Cast
Nick G. Miller (Father Lucas), Ray W. Keziah (Pastor Bill Collins), Matthew Ashford (Father Michael), Dara Wedel (Tina Miller), David Michael Ross (Ross Harper), Rob G. Kahn (Lee Ramsey)
Plot
Two filmmakers, Lee and Ross, are hired to come to a farmhouse in North Carolina. There two Catholic priests and a pastor are attempting to conduct an exorcism of the possessed Tina Miller. Lee and Ross are required to create a document of the exorcism on film. As the exorcism gets underway, the sceptical Lee and Ross experience something demoniac.
The possession and exorcism film has been with us ever since The Exorcist (1973), which has led to a great many sequels and copycats. In the 2000s, the genre underwent a substantial revival with The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005) and there were subsequently a number of films claiming to be true story accounts of exorcisms. (For a more detailed overview of the genre see my essay Possession Films).
The Found Footage fad emerged following the success of The Blair Witch Project (1999). For a number of years, there were various copies of the format, but the genre did not take off until the hit of Paranormal Activity (2007) in wide release in 2009. Chronicles of an Exorcism has the distinction of being the first Found Footage exorcism film and was followed by the likes of Back from Hell (2011), Anneliese: The Exorcist Tapes (2011), the popular hit of The Devil Inside (2012), The Taking of Deborah Logan (2014), Proof of the Devil (2015), The Devil’s Doorway (2018) and the unique likes of The Last Exorcism (2010), The Atticus Institute (2015) and Late Night with the Devil (2023).
Chronicles of an Exorcism came out in the interregnum between Blair Witch and Paranormal Activity, a point when filmmakers were still defining what the formula of the Found Footage genre was. There is a certain primitiveness to the film that would be refined by subsequent entries – the filmmakers here carry boom microphones around with them and wield bulky over-the-shoulder video cameras rather than the lightweight handhelds preferred by most subsequent filmmakers. There is handheld camerawork but none of the ragged, blurred shot-on-video look that subsequently became the de rigeur look for the genre.
Chronicles of an Exorcism is also not quite as theatric in its shock effects as many of the exorcism films that came during the big revival of the genre after this period. It is relatively low-key – Dara Wedel develops white contact lenses and levitates halfway up the wall but that is about it. There is a distinct lack of shock and CGI effects driven possession dramatics here. The one subtle scene is where Dara starts seducing Rob G. Kahn into letting her go.
On the other hand, this does leave us with a film where not much more happens other than a work that passes its way through the usual exorcism film tropes. There is certainly more character focus on the duo of priests and one pastor who are more wracked with doubts about what they are doing than you usually get in these films. It is an okay film, but it is also one that resembles a lot of other similar films.
Chronicles of an Exorcism was a directorial debut for Nick G. Miller who has only made one other film with the non-genre Bassosaurus (2016). He has also produced the non-genre Catch of a Lifetime (2015) and wrote/produced the horror film Wind Walkers (2015).
Trailer here
Full film available here