The Old Ways: Offbeat Thriller About Exorcism Buoyed by Irreverent Humour

By Thom Ernst

Rating: B-

Cristina (Brigitte Kali Canales), a Mexican American journalist, needs a great story to get her career back on track. She sets out to confirm rumours that an ancient ritual, long thought to be forgotten, is still secretly practiced near her ancestorial town of Veracruz.

Cristina reaches out to her cousin Miranda (Andrea Cortés) who warns her to stay away, but as Cristina points out, a good journalist goes to the places they are forbidden to go. In the fashion of characters who refuse to heed warnings, Cristina is kidnapped, chained to a bed, left inside a rundown shack, force-fed goat’s milk, and given a bucket to relieve herself.

It is not the career lead she had hoped for.

But Cristina is more than a hostage; she is the victim of an attempted exorcism. The problem is Cristina isn’t possessed, at least not that she’s aware of and certainly not by a demon. But Cristina’s captors, Luz (Julia Vera) — an elderly woman who dons more face-paint than Braveheart — and her adult son (Sal Lopez) think differently.

Once it’s clear that Miranda, despite a display of concern and affection, will be of no help in escaping and that no amount of arguing her case will convince her captors that she is demon-free, Cristina decides to play along. It’s a good ruse—which director Christopher Alender manages to play for a few laughs—until the exorcisms become invasive.

And then there is the additional problem stemming from the effects of Cristina’s secret little heroin addiction—a habit maintained by a pre-stocked stash of needles. (It hardly makes sense that Cristina should request her travel bag, which is handed to her without inspection, but logic is never a fine point in films like this).

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Cristina’s reactions to the drug, including hallucinating and erratic behaviour, begin to resemble the actions of a woman possessed. The further Cristina continues with her deception, the more dangerous her situation becomes. Yet when her drugged state is used as evidence of her possession, Cristina merely shrugs away the accusation like it were an afterthough, “Oh, that? No, that was something else.”

The Old Ways tosses demonic possession and exorcisms in with movies about vampires and their bloodlust as an analogy for addition, except in The Old Ways the analogy is more on the nose.

The Old Ways might have continued along a path of deception and naïve beliefs and have survived on its bleak and irreverent humour, but director Alender steers the film from dark to darker. It’s not quite an about-face, as the film never reaches a point where it can be taken too seriously, but it does churn out a few unexpected and unpleasant shocks.

The Old Ways. Directed by Christopher Alender. Starring Brigitte Kali Canales, Andrea Cortés, Julia Vera and Sal Lopez. Available now on VOD, DVD, and BluRay.