"I want you to possess me as hard as you can."
It's a common sentiment these days that originality in movies is dead. Everything's reboots, sequels, prequels, and ripoffs.
It's a growing sentiment that spending money on theatrical releases and/or streaming content to support the corporations that control the movie/television industry is becoming more and more difficult to justify on moral and ethical grounds. The actual creators-the workers-who make the shows aren't getting their fair share, so why should any person of conscience spend money on the corporates, y'know?
The business of movies is widely understood to run on greed and the exploitation of workers by corporate interests empowered by a ruthless, fully normalized system of capitalism.
On a creative level, the formulaic franchise iteration prevails. Every now and again, a more understated "indie" formulation is brought to market, politely praised, and promptly forgotten. Originality is not welcome around here, at least not officially . . .
Which leaves the wide open realm of the unauthorized, the piratical, the oh-so-bootleggy, the remixed, the mashed-up, and the deeply faked to seize the spotlight!
Of course, I'm talking about the recent deep fake AI offering Exorsession Club, which is an algorithmically facilitated mix'n'mash of The Exorcist, Fight Club, and a few others.
Exorsession Club basically picks up where Fight Club and The Exorcist both ended: with the total rejection of their respective troublemaker antagonists: the terrorist Tyler Durden and the demon Pazuzu. Durden got forcibly evicted at gunpoint from the Nameless Narrator's psyche. Pazuzu was removed from its victim's body by the selfless actions of a Catholic priest. Well, you can't keep such tenacious spirits of destruction down for long. Soon enough, Durden is up to his old tricks, trying to implant himself inside the brain of some lost-and-lonely-at-the-end-of-history-type, and so he settles upon a spiky haired swordsman undergoing an identity crisis-Cloud Strife from Final Fantasy VII. Pazuzu seeks a young female victim, and it thinks it has found the perfect target in a depressed young Japanese woman named Sadako . . . the terrifyingly vengeful ghost from Ringu! Both Durden and Pazuzu get more than they bargained for, as the possessors become the possessed and a truly fucked-up body/soul swap comedy threatens to wipe out the human species!
Of course, in the end . . . it's about family.
Highlights include:
Durden's head spinning all the way around while spitting pea soup.
Pazuzu giving a shockingly heartfelt recitation of a key speech from Rocky Balboa to Cloud as a pep talk prior to a showdown with Sephiroth.
Sadako's viral shuffle dance.
Neil Breen, John Wick, King Ghidorah, and the Robert Duvall character from Assassination Tango manifest as secret boss fights.
An impressive-if confusing-slapstick sequence in which the nasty spirits from the Evil Dead possess everyone . . . until they are counter-possessed by Pazuzu, Durden, and Sadako . . . and then some Scanners start fucking with everybody's heads . . . it's basically a big damn mess.
I was frankly unimpressed with the rather formulaic action ending which involved the Ghostbusters, the Dirty Dozen, the Seven Samurai, and the Crimson Permanent Assurance riding in as the cavalry when our heroes are seemingly pinned down by the combined forces of Roseanne Barr and Steven Seagal, but this ends up being somewhat redeemed by the cryptic epilogue-cribbed from Animal Crossing-in which Durden and Pazuzu settle down to a much quieter, much cozier existence in which they have decided-at long last-to make a go of simulating the social even if this goes against their anti-social natures. Mid Credits scene has Sadako becoming a Broadway choreographer. Post Credits scene shows Cloud hosting a revival of American Chopper titled Advent Chopper.
I wasn't bored.
7 out of 10.
