‘The Old Ways’ Review — A gooey, gory exorcism flick with a great sense of humor [CFF `21]

Medium
by Eric Langberg

I confess that I am often ambivalent about the exorcism subgenre. At its best — The Exorcist, of course— exorcism movies can be tense exercises in psycho-religio-sexual insanity, using the genre’s baked-in regular jolts and thematic underpinnings to break down characters. At their worst, though, they rely too much on the formulaic nature of the beast, and they’re… well, The Vatican Tapes, a movie so uninspired and limp that I prayed for it to be the last exorcism movie I’d ever have to sit through.

Thankfully, my prayer went un-answered and it wasn’t, because director Christopher Alender’s new horror feature The Old Ways is an exorcism movie, and it’s great.

Read full review.