You're darned right I'm going to defend this film because it's the best exorcism film I've seen in a long time. I loved every minute of The Devil Inside, and that includes the "controversial" ending. Did it end the way I would have wanted it to end? No, but neither did Gone With the Wind, so boo hoo. Never have I seen such a crybaby reaction to a movie scene, with scores of viewers heaping calumny on an entire film -- which some will actually admit they liked up until that point -- purely because a director actually did something bold (the ending is not a cop-out) and threw viewers a wicked curveball at the very end.

Some of the criticism in the media is to be expected because William Brent Bell did not allow those pampered prima donnas to preview the film before it hit theaters, but I would hope that viewers can see fit to give this film a chance. It's not as if the ending doesn't make perfect sense.

The Devil Inside is presented as a documentary of twenty-something Isabella Rossi (Fernanda Andrade) and her attempt to find closure regarding her mother's possible possession. Some 20 years earlier, Maria Rossi (Suzan Crowley) murdered two priests and a nun as they were performing the rite of exorcism upon her. Isabella hopes to learn whether her mother was really possessed or if she just went insane. This takes her and her film crew to Rome, where Maria Rossi was mysteriously transferred after her acquittal of murder by reason of insanity. It's definitely not normal for an insane murderer in America to be shipped off to a Roman Catholic mental institution just outside the shadow of the Vatican. Isabella also takes the opportunity to visit the newly established Vatican school for exorcism, which leads her to two young exorcists who do not agree with the Church's policy of ignoring so many cases featuring all the hallmarks of actual demonic possession.

The exorcism scenes on display here are extraordinarily impressive -- short and powerful. A female contortionist who can twist her body into unimaginable positions makes for a much more realistic possession visual than a head-spinning, spider-walking Linda Blair. These are some intense scenes with a pretty convincing vessel of unholy malevolence spewing out untold evil, and the supernaturally dangerous consequences of any exorcism attempt play out most dramatically as the film works its way toward what I consider its pretty bold and courageous ending. The fact that our exorcists are Church-trained priests operating outside the narrow confines of Vatican policy only raises the thrill factor up a notch.

I know the whole documentary-style horror movie is in the process of being done to death, but I think The Devil Inside is an example of the genre done right. The fact that the demon-spawned horrors and the exorcisms are presented so well gives the film a necessary dose of realism, and that is why The Devil Inside may inspire chills, creeps, obviously some boos at the end -- but not laughter or ridicule. It's definitely one of my new favorite horror films.