Since going in-house on production, B-movie distributor The Asylum has covered all the bases in their past year cranking out a movie a month about vampires, werewolves, mummies, zombies, and resurrected undead killers. They've also kept an eye on Hollywood cranking out quickly done, "close to, but not quite", cash-ins as of late. That's why, Exorcism: The Possession Of Gail Bowers comes as no surprise. It's obviously titled to mimic The Exorcism Of Emily Rose and it also gives them a chance to tackle a low-budget movie about demonic possession - killing two birds with one damn stone as it were.

Supposedly based on a true story (aren't all these types of movies? I'm calling foul on this one), writer-director Leigh Scott (nee Slawner) does a good job of setting things up by opening the movie with Father Thomas Bates (Brick Firestone) heading in to exorcise a possessed girl - only to fail. Scott stages this in a way that betrays the movie's budget using the score (and it's singing Angelic voices), grainy look, and muting any dialogue to his advantage. It's a great moment and it's too bad the somewhat dull mid-section and exorcism in the finale (where it's 3 priests versus the possessed girl) come nowhere close to matching its intensity.

Gail (Eric Roby) is a mildly rebellious teen who's being raised by her older sister and brother-in-law after her parents have died. They've just moved into a new house, which upsets her, and soon she's hanging out with her neighbour Francine (Rebekah Kochan - who's about as weak here as she was as the lead actor in Asylum's next film, When A Killer Calls). One thing leads to another and the two girls decide to mess around with a Ouija board one night. This pisses off Gail's religious sister and, in the process, manages to allow an evil spirit to start taking control of her body.

From there the film hits all the standard possession buttons by having Roby's character sleepwalking, speaking in tongues, and heavily coming onto her sister's husband by talking dirty and touching herself in inappropriate ways (it's pretty creepy - in a perverted old man way - when you consider she's only supposed to be sixteen). We also get to see Francine claw her face off and the family decides to bring-in a psychiatrist (David Shick, who's the worst actor in a mostly decent cast) before our good father is coaxed out of retirement to perform an exorcism.

And speaking of the exorcism that ends the movie off, Scott does shoot it pretty well keeping things tight giving it a somewhat claustrophobic feel as well as throwing in a levitation, stigmata, and pretty cool moment involving a cross flame-up. Like I said before, it can't match the opening scene, but it works better than it should. In fact, a lot of Exorcism: The Possession Of Gail Bowers works better than it should.

If you go into this expecting The Exorcist, you're more than likely to be disappointed - but if you expect a competently made little B-movie and can stick it out through the bland middle parts, this isn't a bad way to spend 91 minutes. It seems that when The Asylum sticks to more "human" stories (meaning movies without some poor CGI monster or undead killer) they seem to turn out the best, let's hope they take note of this and make more of this ilk in the future. (Chris Hartley, 3/8/06)

Directed By: Leigh Scott (Leigh Slawner).
Written By: Leigh Scott (Leigh Slawner).

Starring: Noel Thurman, Brick Firestone, David Shick, Erica Roby.

Picture Ratio: 1.85:1 Widescreen.

Picture Quality: The transfer here is somewhat lackluster and a tiny but fuzzy at times with muted colours and so-so clarity. It could be worse, but it's still nothing special.

Extras: A trailer (plus trailers to 4 other Asylum films), a brief "Behind the Scenes" featurette, 3 deleted scenes, outtakes, and your typical group commentary from Asylum with way too many people in a room talking all at once - it's quite irritating.