After watching Late Night With The Devil, I was looking for similar movies and stumbled upon this one. The Cleansing Hour is a cynical horror comedy officiating the inevitable marriage between exorcisms and social media. I know that this sounds a bit strange but it’s also strangely effective and poignant despite some stereotypical twists. We will be following two best friends, Max and Drew, who livestream their mildly popular show The Cleansing Hour online. Charismatic and good-looking priest Max is in the forefront while Drew takes care of all the technical stuff.
Each episode of the show is practically the same with Max performing a successful exorcism after a couple of staged mishaps. However, this episode will be different. I think you can already guess where they’re going with this so I won’t spend any more time on the plot. I wasn’t sure whether I should recommend The Cleansing Hour to all of you or just to the fans of the genre. The excellent cast, original idea, and surprisingly brutal and believable practical effects convinced me of the former. By confining the movie to a single location, the production made the most out of the seemingly small budget.
Since the story is unfolding in real-time and the running time is quite short, I think that this will be at least a refreshing distraction. A nice warm-up movie to kickstart your exorcism movie night the right way. Right from that gripping opening scene, The Cleansing Hour offers a healthy dose of modern horror entertainment laced with humor. I always appreciate movies that try to create something original and never seen before. And this is definitely one of them. I mean, I guess this is how things would go down if someone decided to make an exorcism show and stream it live. On that note, the branding was fucking spot on.
As I already mentioned, there will be quite a few gruesomely graphic scenes. Both the CGI and the practical effects were believable and not in your face. I can see a bright future for Damien LeVeck who directed and wrote this movie along with Aaron Horwitz. However, his latest movie, A Creature Was Stirring seems to be a miss. It happens and rare are filmmakers without bad or subpar movies. Speaking of the crew, I first must commend our three leads for their phenomenal performances. I don’t know who was better, Alix Angelis as Lane, Kyle Gallner as Drew, or Ryan Guzman as Max.
Kyle is quickly becoming one of those low-key actors who pick awesome moves and give consistently good performances. Hell, just a couple of nights ago, I watched him absolutely destroy the lead role in an indie science fiction movie Alien Code. And I can’t wait to check him out in his latest low-key hit, The Passenger. Moving on, The Cleansing Hour also features excellent demonology lore. As a fan of the occult, it was so much fun to learn more about different demons and I wish they expanded this part of the movie. And if you’re wondering if what they say about this demon is true, it is.
He really is a Grand Marquis of Hell who governs 40 infernal legions, and the 7th spirit of the Goetia. Now, does this sound cool or not? And when I tell you that the source for this information is the 17th-century grimoire The Lesser Key of Solomon compiled from texts several centuries older I think you’ll soon start your Occult Movie marathon. Finally, if you’re looking for movies like The Cleansing Hour, I suggest you check out Deadstream, it’s freaking hilarious. I guess Spree wasn’t that bad although it’s a bit heavy-handed. Finally, if you’re up for something a bit more serious take a look at Untraceable.
Director: Damien LeVeck
Writers: Damien LeVeck, Aaron Horwitz
Cast: Ryan Guzman, Kyle Gallner, Alix Angelis, Chris Lew Kum Hoi, Daniel Hoffmann-Gill, Emma Holzer
Fun Facts: The Cleansing Hour was filmed mostly in Bucharest, Romania although some of the footage was also taken in Santa Clarita, California, USA.
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IMDb Link: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8009906/
