Good concept, poorly executed.

Best movie ever!

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

I'm giving this a 3 only because the subject and interviews were very interesting. The Booth brothers have absolutely no idea how to put together a documentary though. They jump all over the place, include things that are loosely related at best, like the AmittyVille case. Also they need to remember that people who watch documentaries normally know what they are looking at. You can't show a crime scene from the Defeo family murders and try to pass it off as a crime scene photo from another case. I really wish they would have spent more time on what the diary said and less on their "did you hear that" ghost hunting crap. Not to mention this is about the Haunted Boy, yet they spend a good chunk of the "documentary" on clips of their investigations into other cases.All in all, the subject is very interesting and I'm looking forward to seeing a decently done documentary on it.

I saw the lower rating on this one, and I've already seen one other project by the same directors which I did not particularly enjoy a whole lot, so I didn't expect much going in. However, I got a big surprise. This was a really good documentary. It isn't very stylish, there's nothing too exciting visually going on, and I'm not a fan of re-enactments or anything like that. What it does have here is a lot of neat information about the true case that influenced William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist. A lot of people go in assuming they're going to almost see a step-by-step of how the story influenced Blatty, but it's not about him, or the movie- it's about the true case behind it all.I'm non-religious, completely. Yet there is something terribly creepy about the real case here. There is some terrifying stuff here when you sit and listen to it. They go into a lot of the backstory, including St. Vincent's hospital, et cetera, and you get a real sense of the history in all this. Things have been wrong a long time, it seems. I don't really believe in demons, ghosts, none of it- I'm sceptical (yes, I speak and write in true English, as I'm a Canadian), though I want to believe. I just need to see it to believe it. That being said, I didn't go into this documentary hoping to see evidence of ghosts or demons, I went into it wanting to know more about "The Haunted Boy", and where it all started.I gave this 8 out of 10. There is no style to this, it's not exciting to look at, but there's more to it than the look, it's all about the real story that's being investigated. At a few points we get to hear some of the audio from the exorcism of "The Haunted Boy", performed by Father William Bowdern, who himself suffered greatly after the event as well, and what we are able to hear is horrifying. The screams and the sounds which, presumably, come out of the young boy are blood curdling, and absolutely amazing in a horrifying sense. I'm not saying he was "possessed", but something was clearly not right, and the audio really put this over the top for me. A nice look at the real case. I could have done without the dramatizations and such, we've already seen William Friedkin's fantastic adaptation of Blatty's novel and countless other exorcism-based film. However, there was enough to really keep me interested, and I feel it's the best of the Booth Brothers I've seen yet, as opposed to the very lackluster Children of the Grave. I can't see how anybody could rate that awful 'documentary' any higher than this one. I recommend anyone interested in the real events behind Blatty's fictional novel check this out because despite what others say, there are some excellent things in here!

"SUCKS," it spoke back to me in its hauntingly, monotone electronic voice. Then, from within my room, I heard laughter. It was my own. This "documentary" was hilarious! Grown men playing with their ghost hunting toys, while trying to act serious, is funny to me. Who do they really think they are kidding? What was the need for all those silly electronic devices to tell a story they never really told? Go, go gadget thermal image camera! It found a hot spot around the one guy's head because he's full of hot air.Seriously, this was horrible. These guys don't know how to tell a story. They jumped from one place to another. From one person to another. Showed scenes and talked to people that had nothing at all to do with the original story. Constantly putting words on the screen. Showing type-written pages that we are to believe was a secret old diary. The same newspaper headlines over and over again. This was nothing but a bunch of people claiming to be "Paranormal Investigators" and "Ghost Hunters" walking around with their gadgets, filming hot, cold, black masses, orbs, and whatever else they could come up with to try and make us believe they were actually in direct contact with demons while filming this "documentary." This turned out to be more about themselves and Father Bowdern than it did about The Haunted Boy. All I got from this was that the boy was moved from his home to a hospital and then to an asylum. A couple of priests eventually exercised him somewhere. Oh, and his bed was really heavy and it levitated. I gave this a 2 out of 10 for the couple of things that actually had to do with the boy.I just asked OVILUS another question. "What lies ahead for these brothers?" "Brothers." "Booth." "No." "Future." "In." "Film-making." "Losers." OVILUS has spoken...

I saw this movie earlier tonight (10/21/2010) at its world premiere in the Tivoli Theater in St. Louis, MO.It was very disappointing.Touted as a docudrama exploring the true history of the events that inspired William Blatty's 1971 book/1974 movie "The Exorcist", instead the audience was subjected to 90 minutes of the random meandering nonsense that happens when wannabe ghost hunters are given a camera and a budget.Divining rods... ouija boards... evps... ambiguous shadowy figures... digitally blurred faces speaking in electronically disguised voices... embarrassingly lame re-creations... erratic timelines... tiring repetitions... irrelevant sidetracks... an aggressively bad soundtrack... sigh...Viewers hoping for an illuminating exposé will have to settle for an incredibly frustrating lack of substance. This movie offered no coherent facts or details that would lead to a clearer understanding of what actually happened to this boy, who was involved, why, and what they actually did.I left the movie confused and knowing scarcely more about this case than I did when I arrived.