Not quite a spoof, My Best Friend’s Exorcism is a horror comedy that pays almost pitch-perfect homage to the high-school and scary movies that dominated the 1980s. (It celebrates some of the decade’s other horrors too: the massive perms, Cherry Coke and bright pink eyeshadow.) Adapted from Grady Hendrix’s novel about teenage friendship and loyalty tested by demonic possession, it is superfun with a couple of comedy performances that nail it.
Elsie Fisher plays likable everygirl Abby, a plain, spotty self-conscious scholarship kid at a posh Catholic school. Her popular, beautiful and occasionally mean best friend is Gretchen (Amiah Miller). On a visit to a cabin by a lake, after a spin on the Ouija board, Abby and Gretchen dare each other to go into a creepy building in the woods. Gretchen emerges with lank hair and cracked lips (dead giveaways of demonic possession). Then she starts acting like a capital-B bitch, making her friends’ lives a living hell (truly, the point cannot be made too many times in horror movies that teenage years can be torture without satanic intervention).
