If there’s one thing the devil loves, it’s sequels. Apparently, he’s not content with possessing children, priests, or your Wi-Fi signal — now he’s after continuity rights. The Exorcism of Molly Hartley (2015) is the cinematic equivalent of finding out that the demon from The Exorcist went to community college and majored in disappointment.
Directed by Steven R. Monroe — the same man who gave us the I Spit on Your Grave remake — this follow-up to 2008’s The Haunting of Molly Hartley attempts to exorcise something far scarier than demons: bad writing, tired tropes, and the ghost of “why does this exist?”
Holy Plot Holes, Father
Let’s start with the obvious: nobody needed a sequel to The Haunting of Molly Hartley. The first film was a teenage melodrama with a Satanic twist. It ended with Molly, our angsty high school heroine, accepting her fate as Satan’s favorite daughter. That was a perfectly serviceable ending.
Fast-forward seven years, and Molly is now an adult who apparently spends her free time dabbling in group sex and involuntary homicide. We meet her after a threesome gone wrong — her two partners end up dead, which is a bold way to start a horror film and an even bolder way to ruin a Tinder profile.
Meanwhile, Father John Barrow (Devon Sawa, yes, that Devon Sawa from Final Destination and Idle Hands) is busy losing his priest license after botching an exorcism that ends in death. The Vatican, understandably, benches him like a disgraced NFL quarterback.
So naturally, when the now-possessed Molly gets institutionalized in the same asylum where Barrow is being kept, fate — or, more likely, the screenwriter — brings them together.
Possession: Now With More Bureaucracy
This asylum, by the way, is one of those movie mental hospitals where the lighting is always flickering and every nurse looks like she’s two days away from a nervous breakdown.
Molly is dumped there after doing her best Linda Blair impression during a police interrogation. Soon, she starts hearing voices, vomiting bugs, and looking like she’s been sleepwalking through a Marilyn Manson concert. The hospital’s resident skeptic, Dr. Laurie Hawthorn (Gina Holden), insists it’s all psychological trauma — because nothing says “science” like ignoring insects crawling out of a patient’s throat.
But after a few supernatural incidents — think spinning heads, power outages, and general infernal mischief — she begins to suspect that something truly unholy is going on. So, naturally, she recruits the one man least qualified for the job: the ex-priest in the loony bin.
That’s right. The Church stripped Father Barrow of his collar for killing people mid-exorcism, but apparently Dr. Hawthorn’s risk assessment training consisted of “just wing it.”
The Power of Cliché Compels You
If you’ve seen The Exorcist, The Conjuring, or literally any episode of Supernatural, you’ve already seen this movie — only better.
Every single exorcism trope makes a cameo appearance here:
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Crosses flipping upside-down? Check.
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The possessed speaking in multiple voices like an unholy conference call? Check.
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A priest with a tortured past who needs redemption? Double check.
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Random bugs representing evil for no discernible reason? You bet your crucifix.
And yet, The Exorcism of Molly Hartley doesn’t even commit to its clichés properly. The scares are lazy, the pacing slower than a Vatican paperwork queue, and the dialogue sounds like it was written by a Ouija board with ADHD.
At one point, a demon bug crawls into Molly’s mouth and nobody calls pest control. I’ve seen better containment procedures on Hoarders.
Performances From Hell (And Not in a Good Way)
Sarah Lind returns as Molly, giving a performance that can only be described as “permanently confused but still trying.” She spends most of the movie staring into the distance as if she’s trying to remember where she parked her soul.
Devon Sawa plays Father Barrow like he’s hungover at confession. His line delivery fluctuates between “bored man at a drive-thru” and “screaming into the void.” The man looks perpetually one bad script away from calling his agent and asking, “So… Casper 2?”
Then there’s Peter MacNeill as Chaplain Davies, the resident authority figure who secretly moonlights as a Satanic cult leader. He’s the kind of villain who explains the entire plot in one monologue, just in case you missed the “we ran out of ideas” memo.
And poor Gina Holden — as Dr. Hawthorn, she tries to bring logic to this nonsense, but her character’s main function is to alternate between disbelief and screaming. She’s basically the film’s emotional support skeptic.
Bugs, Beelzebub, and the Bad Ending
Let’s talk about those bugs. Apparently, this movie decided that demonic possession isn’t scary enough unless it’s also entomologically confusing. The demon manifests as a swarm of CGI insects that crawl in and out of people’s mouths like they’re auditioning for a Raid commercial.
During the exorcism scene, Father Barrow traps these bugs in a box — because, sure, that’s how spiritual warfare works now. Later, when the box goes missing, we find out the chaplain replaced it with a rock, because twist! he’s part of a Satanic plot to birth the Antichrist.
Honestly, by this point, I was rooting for the bugs. They had more personality than half the cast.
The finale cranks the absurdity up to eleven. There’s a cult ritual, a stabbing, more bugs, and a fiery explosion of nonsense. Molly is “saved,” Father Barrow redeems himself, and just when you think it’s over — surprise! One of the bugs escapes and finds a new host on a school bus.
Apparently, this was meant to set up another sequel. Thankfully, even the Devil said, “Nah, I’m good.”
The Real Horror: The Script
The movie wants to explore guilt, faith, and redemption — noble goals for a horror film. But every time it tries to be deep, it trips over its own rosary.
The dialogue is full of lines like “She’s carrying something inside her!” and “The Devil always finds a way!” which sound less like theology and more like rejected Lifetime movie titles.
It’s like the screenwriter Googled “how to write an exorcism scene” and just copied the first Wikipedia paragraph. The result is a movie that mistakes volume for fear — people yell, things shake, but nothing actually resonates.
Cinematography and Direction: Straight to DVD, Straight to Despair
Steven R. Monroe’s direction is functional in the way a motel lamp is functional — it technically provides light, but you’d rather just sit in the dark.
The asylum setting could’ve been atmospheric, but it’s shot so flatly that it feels more like a public storage unit with delusions of grandeur. The exorcism scenes, meant to be terrifying, look like someone filmed a fog machine commercial on a student budget.
Even the music — a droning choir of generic spookiness — feels recycled from a 2003 haunted house attraction.
The Devil’s Due… for a Refund
The Exorcism of Molly Hartley is not just a bad sequel; it’s an unholy merger of dull plotting, cheap scares, and demonic bugs that should’ve stayed in post-production.
It tries to blend psychological horror with religious spectacle, but ends up delivering neither. It’s too boring to be scary and too self-serious to be fun. It’s like watching someone try to exorcise a PowerPoint presentation.
Final Thoughts: Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Stream This
If the Devil really wanted to torture souls, he wouldn’t use eternal fire — he’d just screen this movie on loop in Hell’s waiting room.
It’s 96 minutes of unholy mediocrity, saved only by the accidental comedy of its absurd plot twists. If you’re looking for a film about faith, redemption, and the dark battle for the soul — rewatch The Exorcist. If you’re looking for a drinking game where you take a shot every time someone shouts “She’s possessed!” — congratulations, this is your masterpiece.
Final Score: 3/10
A film so spiritually bankrupt even the Devil asked for a refund. There’s bad horror, and then there’s “I wish I’d been possessed instead of watching this.”
