My Best Friend’s Exorcism is a new adaptation of the wonderful Grady Hendrix novel of the same name, made for Prime Video. MBFE is one of favorite horror books in recent memory, so let’s see how I will feel about the Hollywood take on it.
Well, there are definitely high points of the film including a terrific performance from the lead Elsie Fisher( Eighth Grade, Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2022) and Amiah Miller, there just seems to be some bite missing from the book into this adaptation. It’s great to see like Grady Hendrix get their novels turned into big productions. It seemed like they turned this into the children and YA audience, which is fine, but it missed the mark with me.
Some of the dialogue in My Best Friend’s Exorcism was terrible, it felt like elementary school conversations instead of high school. The supporting actors felt wasted for the most part not giving them much to do. Cathy Ang deserved much more for her character. Chris Lowell at least did a good job with his character.
The pacing from director Damon Thomas was so uneven, the movie itself felt like it could’ve worked much better a miniseries rather a shortened movie. I wonder if there’s a directors cut out there somewhere with more character development that could help make this work. Unfortunately you can tell why it went to streaming.
Overall Grade: 2/5 Stars
You can watch my interview with Grady Hendrix here:
