I am not entirely sure why people who don't like to be afraid in real life go out of their way to enjoy the same feeling in the movie theater.
Perhaps it's because their inner cortex knows it's not real. Or perhaps this is some strange mating ritual in which boys take girls to horror movies in order to get them frightened, which results in the vastly clever male showing his protective side.
But people's motivations for watching horror films aside, I have my doubts that a new movie called "The Last Exorcism" will be a fine work of art, or will even depict the last exorcism ever seen on screen.
However, I do find myself enjoying the enchanting build-up the movie's producers have created, the co-star being the celebrated exhibitionist horror site Chatroulette. It appears they took to Chatroulette, the site that lets people randomly view others via Webcam, to pull off their movie marketing plot--turning an otherwise innocent matchup into a somewhat terrifying scene for what appear to be unsuspecting Chatrouletters.
The ads (shown in the video below) may or may not involve real Chatroulette participants. But, should they even be actors, their performances are so genuine that I wonder if any movie director--or even the fine individual who directed "The Last Exorcism"--could elicit such humanity from mere mortals. [Editor's note: The video contains explicit language.]
You may be particularly enchanted by the girl in glasses playing with what looks like her little brother and by the chap in the baseball cap who makes as if he has never seen a girl bend her neck sideways to a 90-degree angle till her vertebrae pop like a crushed bag of cashew nuts.
I am confident that, as this footage wafts its way around the Web, advance bookings for "The Last Exorcist" will soar, as will the participation of young boys seeking more spontaneous horror on Chatroulette.