THE EXORCISM OF MOLLY HARTLEY (2015) **

The Exorcism of Molly Hartley opens with a decent enough Exorcist copy.  Two priests try to perform an exorcism on a pregnant woman.  She convinces the dumb, young priest, Father Barrow (Devon Sawa) to untie her.  Rookie mistake.  She flies up off the bed, grabs the other priest, and goes flying out the window with him.  Barrow is blamed for the murders and is sent to a nuthouse soon after.

Meanwhile, hottie Molly Hartley (Sarah Lind from True Justice) is celebrating her birthday/promotion by going to the club, getting high on E., and having a three-way back at her pad.  Of course, when some cops find the couple slaughtered and soaking in Molly’s tub, it can only mean one thing… party’s over.  And that she’s possessed by the devil.  So… that’s two things I guess.

Anyway, she gets sent to the loony bin, which just so happens to be the same one Father Barrow is in.  Medical science fails to drive the devil out of Molly, so her doctor (Gina Holden) turns to Father Barrow for help.  Naturally, he’s looking for a shot at redemption and agrees to a rematch against Satan.  

Don’t ask me why they waited eight years to make a sequel to The Haunting of Molly Hartley.  Perhaps it was a clever move on director Steven R. (the I Spit on Your Grave remake) Monroe’s part.  Knowing that all that time has passed, it’s a safe bet that everyone’s forgotten what happened in the last one (I sure as shit did), which frees him up to do his own thing. 

At least he had the right idea by going hard-R and not that watered-down PG-13 crap like the original.  I mean any movie that has a possessed pregnant woman flying out of a window AND an Ecstasy-fueled three-way in the first fifteen certainly grabs your attention.  If you’re a fan of Exorcist rip-offs, The Exorcism of Molly Hartley has you covered.  We get all the bed levitating, split-pea soup puking, messages appearing on people’s skin, and priests flying out of windows you’d expect from one of these things.  (There’s even a death that blatantly steals from The Omen for good measure.)  

Had Monroe ended the movie with the exorcism, we would’ve had a nifty, if derivative chiller.  Unfortunately, it continues needlessly on for another twenty minutes with a useless devil worshipping subplot and an attempted human sacrifice.  Sometimes, you have to know when to quit when you’re ahead; even if you are directing a years-too-late DTV sequel of a flick everyone forgot about.

I did like the scene where Sawa went to visit his mentor for advice.  He tells him to go ahead and do an exorcism.  Sawa says, “I’m not a priest anymore!” 

To which his mentor replies, “You don’t have to be in the NBA to play basketball!”

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