I bring you The Cleansing Hour: an exorcism movie that doesn’t do anything original but still is fun for a watch, touching on the topics of internet streaming and social media fame that get lost in B-Movie special effects and acting. Despite all this, it’s still entertaining for what it is. It is a straight to video B-Movie that excels at nothing but entertains with its mediocrity; all with a touch of blasphemy and sacrilege. All in all, it is an okay viewing experience - just don’t expect fine directing, excellent writing, or spectacular acting. It is what it is. A Video on Demand or Streaming horror movie and everything that comes with a film of that genre.
The Cleansing Hour is the story of a fake priest, Max (Ryan Guzman) and childhood friend, Drew (Kyle Gallner), and their livestreaming of supposed exorcisms. The idea is them pushing their show to up viewership and sell merchandise. Max tries to play off being a priest to sell it, but he is anything but a religious holy man. Drew runs everything behind the scenes from production to merch sales. Then everything goes wrong when they run into an actual demon. It’s a semi-generic story about exorcism and demon possession with a modern technology twist. Some of the make up would make Deadites jump for joy with a scheme that appears directly modeled after the Evil Dead. At various points, random creatures show up along with the demon and just really don’t seem to be inspired in design but more of a rehash of things that have already been done in various other. The story as a whole is almost a complete paint by numbers tale for this kind of film. Even some of the twists do not really take any creative turns.
There is obvious influence from movies like Nekrotronic with Monica Bellucci, a plethora of exorcist films, and the Evil Dead Deadite makeup and acting style. The film loses some of its coherence while trying to go through three different story lines. They do an ok job of tying it all together by the end but the various storylines detract from what could have been a much more interesting saga, if they had just stuck with one of the stories that was covered in the hour and a half they used to present it. It isn’t a bad movie per se. It has some interesting and fun moments. It just lacks in creativity or any stretch of originality at all. By no means will it make a list of best with the likes of The Exorcist or the Exorcism of Emily Rose. It is just going to serve as some mindless viewing fun for an evening with friends and possibly have your own personal session of Mystery Science Theater commentary as it plays out.
RORSCHACH RATING:
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Victims and Villains is written Josh "Captain Nostalgia" Burkey (and produced by) and more. Music by Mallory Johnson and others. This review was edited by Cam Smith. The Cleansing Hour is property of Shudder. We do not own nor claim any rights. The Cleaning Hour is now streaming exclusively on Shudder.
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