Make no mistake about it, this latest entry in the shaky-cam horror movie sweepstakes is more of the same, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Like Paranormal Activity before it, the Eli Roth-produced horror flick The Last Exorcism (formerly titled Cotton) has that familiar low-budget approach to the production employed by the haunted house hit.

In this film, however, Cotton Marcus (Patrick Fabian), a scam artist/evangelical preacher, takes along a video crew to tape a fake exorcism that he claims will be his last. Gleefully demonstrating his sleight-of-hand trickery for the camera, he exposes the fraud used by many like himself to swindle poor gullible rubes out of their money: hidden speakers, shaking beds, smoke bombs, and the like…not exactly Penn and Teller, but his victims aren't exactly the sharpest tools in the shed either.

Louis Herthum plays Louis Sweetzer, a protective fundamentalist father who turns his back on the outside world beyond his farmstead and chooses instead to keep his family away from the undesirable influences of modern society by home-schooling his children. But when daughter Nell (Ashley Bell), develops an unfortunate habit of sleepwalking and eviscerating farm animals, he contacts an evangelical preacher to perform a good ol' fashioned exorcism. Is Nell actually possessed by a cat-hating demon from Hell, or is it simply all in her pretty little head? Unless you've been living your whole life under a rock (or home-schooled by a religious fanatic, apparently), you can probably guess the plot already...and you'd be mostly right on the money.

From then on, it's a low-rent reality-cam version of William Friedkin's often-imitated-but-never-duplicated masterpiece, The Exorcist. There are no surprises here, in fact, most of you will be able to spot the ending coming from a mile away, stumbling in the underbrush, carrying a sharp farm implement. What this film does get right is mostly in the scare department (granted, a good element to get right). Director Daniel Stamm (A Necessary Death) orchestrates scenes of creepiness that outdo many recent big-budget Hollywood offerings without resorting to heaps of flashy CG or gut-churning gore. Much of what is onscreen is implied using simple techniques that still work today: power outages, offscreen screaming, shadowy lighting…

It is unfortunate that the film's one memorable image is the one chosen by its marketing department to promote the movie. To be fair, the "brokeback" sequence is a strong one, but they've essentially given it to you for free and diminished its onscreen shock value.

I feel I must also emphasize that the flavor-of-the-month, hand-held camera approach is starting to wear thin on me, and I am anxious to move on from this overwrought technique. Following the Blair Witch playbook page-for-page, the cinema verité pseudo-documentary style has been the standard solution for filmmakers with next to no budget, and The Last Exorcism isn't shy about using it throughout the entire movie. It's a strategy that has long worn out its welcome and if you think you've seen all you need to see in shaky-cam horror movies, then this will be no exception. However, if you just can't get enough, then step right up, be seated, and keep your arms inside the car at all times—you're in for a bumpy ride!

As any graverobber worth his stolen cadavers will tell you, the easiest graves to rob are the ones whose dirt has been dug up over and over again. The Last Exorcism does not break any new ground; the shocks are familiar and reliable. If that's all you require, then yes, it does exactly what it sets out to do, and as such, is a standard supernatural story told reasonably well. Watch it with a big bag of popcorn and have a few jumps and jolts; this is a haunted house carnival ride to be enjoyed and promptly forgotten when the safety bar flips up.

Recently picked up by Lionsgate, The Last Exorcism is due to take possession of theatergoers on August 27, 2010.