The Tubi Original film on the dissection table this week is one that came by special request from my partner in horror, Michelle. Godless: The Eastfield Exorcism was directed by Nick Kozakis, an Australian filmmaker with numerous shorts and music videos to his credit, as well as co-directing a sci-fi horror film called Plague, and both directing and writing a modernized film version of Romeo & Juliet called just Romeo. Interesting resume. The film was written by Alexander Angliss-Wilson, and according to IMDB, is his very first credit of any kind.

Brief aside: the synopsis for this film on Tubi and the synopsis on IMDB are almost, but not exactly, identical. There are, like, three very minor differences. Am I the only one who finds that weird? Anyway, I prefer the version on IMDB, so here it is: Lara is a woman tormented, torn between science and faith. Her husband pushes her to seek treatment from a congregation of zealots, and a ruthless exorcist tries to save her soul by putting an innocent woman through hell.

My spoiler free thoughts are pretty simple. The film explores the familiar “is it demonic possession or severe mental health problems” territory, but here’s the problem for me: I thought it was saying, “it seems to be one thing but is really the other,’ when it was actually saying, “it seems to be the other but is really the one thing.” The way the story was told led me to believe exactly the opposite of what was really going on. Is that the movie’s fault? Not at all. I talked about it with Michelle, and she got the correct impression of what it was doing. Many other reviews I have read got it as well. I did not. On the upside, all the horror sequences were pretty rad, but that was all for me. 2/5 Skulls.

Look, I know that was super vague, and probably confusing, but I promise it will make more sense when we get to the spoiler section, which we are getting to right now. If you don’t want spoilers before you see the film, stop here.

Alright, let’s take a deep breath and run through the spoiler synopsis. Lara is a lady who has some real bad stuff going on in her life. She sleepwalks, she has seizures, she seems to become someone else sometimes, etc. She is going to see a psychiatrist, but her husband Ron thinks she is possessed by a demon. He is part of a real Jesus Camp type of church that feels real culty. Daniel the Exorcist gets involved and, along with Ron and his church cult friends, proceeds to try and torture the demons out of Lara. Apparently there are three of them, except one of them is Legion, and we all know how that works. Anyway, we finally get the big reveal where we learn that Lara is really just traumatized by a terrible auto accident several years prior that she survived, but her husband and their infant child blew up with their car. Also the other driver was trapped in his truck and burned alive. Also she may be schizophrenic. But we learn this all just in time for Danny Demon Hunter to kill Lara by snapping her bottom jaw clean apart. Would this really kill someone? Doesn’t matter. It looked cool. Ron and Daniel and the church cult people all go to jail, and then we get a title card showing (presumably) the identities of some real people who were killed in torturous exorcism rituals by church cults. The end.

So now let me clarify what I meant in those vague spoiler-free thoughts. This movie very obviously is trying to tell the story of a woman who is experiencing severe PTSD on top of severe mental health conditions, and the horror is that she gets murdered by a cult that thinks it’s a case of demonic possession. And I certainly considered that possibility. But something about the way this story was told made me think it was trying to tell the story of a woman who fails to successfully treat her severe PTSD and mental health conditions because she is actually possessed by a demon for real. There are things that I think the filmmakers thought were clever smoke and mirrors, but to me just felt like out and out lies, for lack of a better word. Ultimately, I felt like the film tried to have its cake and eat it, too. And that just doesn’t work for me.

I will give it this, though: the horror elements absolutely worked for me. Very effective use of what they had to work with. The trips inside Lara’s head to share her experience are wild The makeup effects are good. The jaw breaking is brutal. There is really solid horror show here, and for that I do want to commend it.

Godless: The Eastfield Exorcism currently enjoys a 92% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with eleven of twelve critic reviews all coming in on the Fresh side, including two considered top critics. So, clearly I am in the minority here, and you may really enjoy this.

Oh, and if you’re curious, THIS is the true story that inspired the film. It’s pretty harrowing and tragic, though, so reader beware.

Next week, we finally talk Mirame.