Possession films in the past such as "The Devil Inside" have proved to be sick, and freak out the audience with the display of it's demonic possession. PG-13 possession films have proved to be quite sick, and perhaps good as well, hence "The Last Exorcism". This possession film, "The Vatican Tapes" comes out solid, but tends to be quite clichéd.
Starting off with the story of this film, of which seems to be quite simple. Our main character becomes possessed, and it progressively gets worse, and worse overtime. Her family, with the aid of some priests must figure out what's wrong and stop it. It seems very simple, but the way the story is executed in this film was very solid, for what it was, a simple, straight to the point plot. As the story continues, we get more in depth with the demons personality, per say. We get to see what it can do, and how it possesses it's powers to it's advantage. Overall, the story / plot is quite simple, but without spoiling anything, the movie carries it all out solidly, holding it's grasp.
The acting of this film, in my opinion was fine. Just fine. We get some pretty decent actors combining together in this film, which is great and all, but the situations they had to face lead they're acting to be a bit sketchy at points. Some parts of the film, for example when the actors fall back, scared, you kind of stare at the movie asking yourself .. "What?" Parts of which they DO seem serious, just seems funny toward the audience watching. In this case, they SEEM to be overacting when certain points come, but are actually not, instead are seeming that way due to the specific situation they're being put in. But in conclusion to this element, the situations that came to horror [ The scares, exorcism, etc. ] it was fine, not fantastic.
The scares of this movie, is defiantly something to conclude with. It's pretty much clichéd. You've pretty much seen this tactic in many films before. Dose this perhaps ring a bell? A bird flying at the window? Through it? Yea. We've seen this before, at least once. There's also, once again, without spoiling anything some other scares that have been seen before, on top of that, some of them are even horribly placed in time, making a failed attempt at scaring the audience, instead of scaring them, giving them a laugh even. There are also some scares floating around that will make you jump, but then when you realize what it was that made you jump, you'd ask yourself "How did that scare me!?" Either way, the point being there are few, to no scares that will get you deep in the core in this film. In conclusion, if your looking to get scared, from either tension itself, it won't happen. If you want an ear blasting loud noise, here you go! Another cliché method themed film filled with those!
In conclusion. The movie had simple flaws of which are extremely clichéd, however, the movie held grip with a solid execution, as well as some decent demonic possession methods. It dose hold many elements you typically see in other possession films, sure, but it was solid, and managed to keep the audience entertained. One way or another. It wasn't that bad of a film, but it lacked in critical horror elements, like scares, and tension. As there were none. But never the less, this horror flick was not bad at all. Just.. flawed deeply, and held back due to it's PG-13 rating.
