The Cleansing Hour (2019)

The Cleansing Hour is a 2019 horror film directed by Damien LeVeck about a staged televised exorcism that takes a nefarious turn. It was also released on Shudder in 2020.

Plot
A person is strapped to a bed in a studio next to his grieving family, having been possessed by the demon Beleth. A priest, Father Max, exorcises Beleth from his body. It is revealed that everything is being livestreamed, the show being called The Cleansing Hour, hosted by childhood friends Max and Drew. In reality each possession is fake, as they are carefully scripted and orchestrated to entice viewers to like and follow their videos and purchase merchandise, such as blankets. The other crew members include the cameramen Chris and Thomas, as well as Thomas's niece, Riley. Max is obsessed with drawing as large a crowd as possible and gaining a bigger following. Drew's fiancée Lane is unhappy but supportive of everything. For that night's show, the person set to be exorcised, Dante, doesn't show up and Lane volunteers to be his replacement. In reality, Dante was pulled into an alleyway by a demon-looking man and killed.

Chris, haven taken drugs the night before, goes into a bathroom to wash his face and sees blood coming out of the sink. He is startled when a pair of hands come out of the mirror, causing him to fly back and crack his skull on a pipe, which knocks him out. When the show begins, it is evident that Lane is actually possessed. The demon causes Thomas's tattoos to explode and incinerate his arm, followed by the rest of his body. Riley tries to stop the fire but it fails, and Thomas burns to death. The demon forces Max and Riley to be on stage, and for Drew to stay off of it, otherwhise the demon will kill Lane. The stream is watched by multiple people, including the president's son Bryce, three people at a restaurant, two people while their friend is fixing his motorcycle, a wife while her husband repairs their broken down car, a police officer sitting in a car next to his partner, and a bar where Brenda and Desiree are, Max having had a one night stand with Desiree.

The demon forced Max to reveal all of his secrets, including that the show is staged and that he is a fake. Riley tries to run but the demon levitates a statue of Jesus and flies it at her head, causing it to ram into the back of her skull, killing her. Drew goes into the bathroom and finds Chris, who runs out after seeing a dog-like demon creature. The demon creature, which only Chris can see, attacks Chris and Chris uses a switchblade to try to stab it. However, as the creature isn't there, he ends up slashing his wrists and then his neck open. The demon makes Max confess to accidentally murdering a nun while he was a schoolboy. Both he and Drew attended the same Catholic school as children, where they were frequently beaten by a sadistic nun while she castigated them for real or imagined sins. During one particularly bad beating Max pushed her in order to save Drew, causing her to fall eye-first onto a pencil. Drew realizes that the demon is Aamon, before the demon reveals that Max slept with Lane before she met drew. Drew begins to brutally beat and strangle Max, until he stops and begins to exorcise the demon along with Max.

The demon breaks free and begins to strangle Max, only for Drew to finish the exorcism, banishing Aamon. Lane is released, but the demon possesses the corpse of Thomas and reveals that it is not Aamon, but Lucifer. Lucifer looks into the camera livestreaming everything before cutting the feed, causing everyone watching to become possessed. The cooks at the restaurant attack the others, burning one's face off on a grill and hacking another in the back with a meat cleaver. The three possessed cooks then advance on the final surviving one, stabbing her. The people in the bar take the bartender and place him on the floor with a beer bottle in his mouth, before Desiree kills him by stomping on it. The man with the motorcycle is killed when his friends shred his jaw with the wheel, the wife come up to her husband with a tire iron and bludgeons him with it, and the cop is shot in the face by his partner. Bryce stabs his mother in the chest, before coming up to the president and stabbing him to death. He shoots the two guards in the head and leaves, with the mayhem spreading.