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Any movie with the word exorcism in the title is inviting you to compare it to a movie that a great many people consider the scariest horror film ever made. So you can say this much for "The Last Exorcism," a fake documentary horror film that tries to raise a little hell in the shaky-cam, this-is-really-happening spirit of paranormal activity and "The Blair Witch Project." It's nothing if not clever about toying with your expectations.

The central character is a charismatic Southern yuppie preacher named Cotton Marcus, played by Patrick Fabian, who's a self-confessed fraud. The basic conceit is that he's allowing a documentary to be made about him. He plans to leave his career fire-and-brimstone baloney behind by taking a film crew along on one of his sham exorcisms -- spooky, flimflam rites of devil conjuring that he stages in the homes of deluded rednecks, who think they have a possessed family member in their midst. For his final bogus exorcism, Cotton visits the home of Louis, an ignorant, alcoholic farmer who believes that his 16-year-old daughter, Nell, has got the devil inside her. Played by Ashley Bell with the beatific smile of someone who could be a Sunday-school saint or a Manson girl, or maybe both at once, Nell is just ambiguous enough to fascinate us.

So what does the devil look like in "The Last Exorcism?" I'd be the Antichrist if I spoiled it, but I will say that the movie is a nightmare vision of the rise of Christian fundamentalism.

"The Last Exorcism" is pretty good at stringing us along, feeding off our anticipation. Yet the payoff isn't scary enough. It’s like "The Exorcist" without a spine-tingling catharsis. Still, the movie does leave you with creepy images of a newly severe Bible thumping underground America. That's the thing about the devil in movies -- he's really just a mirror.