Good ideas, but why did it suck?

Fake CCTV - major turnoff, dates movie, ruins atmosphere
Pena - performance was phoned in, never really acted like a priest/was not believable
Girl-missing depth and emotion

Everyone acted like a possessed person was kind of ordinary and just went with the flow...like when you order a burger with swiss but they're out, so you go with the flow and have american cheese.

Also the ending. Just when something interesting finally happens, the movie ends.

It just took bits and pieces of exorcism movies and slapped them together with lackluster performances and boring speacial effects that weren't very special. It wasn't scary or suspenseful at all and I didn't care what happened to any of the characters, they were very thinly constructed.

I said, "oh no" when I saw there was an old priest and a young priest, with the older one who travels to the US from far away and is very experienced in exorcisms. There was a line about the devil using the truth mixed up with lies to confuse people. and it was explicitly stated that what's really at stake here is the soul of the possessed person, not their body (really? REALLY? That needs to be spelled out?)

I said, "If she throws up on the old priest I am shutting this off" And when she yakked on him that's exactly what I did.

If you've seen "The Exorcist" you've seen all this already, and that was MUCH MUCH MUCH better done in every way. The Exorcist will give you nightmares; this movie will just put you to sleep.

For me the director dropped the ball when addressing several aspects of the movie.

The first problem I had was the relationship between the Father and boyfriend. It was way too one dimensional. There was no reason to have the very generic and strictly adversarial dynamic between the two. Imagine how much more solid the rest of the film would have been just be making their relationship more complex and nuanced. The entire story becomes more compelling.

While I'm a huge fan of Michael Pena, I had a problem with him being cast in that roll.

The trip in the elevator to watch a couple priests watch the wall of tv screens was a bit ridiculous. I would have liked to have just seen a montage of new clips to get us up to date and have the final screen become a screen the two of them are watching. Then tie things up for us.

I think these 3 changes would have taken a pretty solid movie over the top.

One...you're acting crazy... and for what?