MY BEST FRIEND’S EXORCISM

*CUT TO THE CHASE*

NOTE: This spoiler was submitted by Jeremy

1988 – Abby Rivers (Elsie Fisher) and Gretchen Lang (Amiah Miller) are best friends. Gretchen is moving away over the summer, which saddens Abby, but Gretchen assures them they will always be like sisters. Gretchen has strict Catholic parents, while Abby’s family is more laid back, though her mother believes Abby acts a certain way because of Gretchen’s influence.

The girls go to their school, Aberdeen Academy, with their other friends, Margaret Chisolm (Rachel Ogechi Kanu) and Glee Tanaka (Cathy Ang). Margaret has an obnoxious boyfriend, Wallace Stoney (Clayton Royal Johnson), who the rest of the girls cannot stand. She suggests that the friends go to her family’s lake house over the weekend.

The friends head out for the weekend, going for a swim in the lake and then gathering at night to play with a ouija board. They believe they are actually contacting a demon, as it goes over the letters M I N, but they don’t see the planchette also land on E. The girls hear a noise, and Margaret makes Abby check the closet. A broom falls out, and Wallace jumps out to scare them as a prank orchestrated by him and Margaret. He gives the girls acid tabs so they can trip out.

The group goes skinny dipping in the lake except for Abby. After Margaret makes a crude comment about her acne (one of her insecurities), Abby walks away, with Gretchen following her and trying to reassure Abby that she is beautiful. The two then come across an old abandoned creepy house. They hear noises but think that they are just tripping out from the acid. In the corner, they see something moving, and an eye opens and blinks. The girls try to run out, but a sinister voice manipulates them into hearing each other’s voices, so Abby thinks she hears Gretchen running behind her while Gretchen thinks Abby is still in the house trying to lead her out. Something grabs Gretchen by the legs and pulls her away. Abby is found by Margaret and Glee, and they go back into the house to find that there’s just a raccoon in there. They find Gretchen looking worse for wear, asking Abby if they can go home, but Margaret thinks she just had a bad acid trip.

Back at school, the girls watch as a religious performance trio, the Lemon Brothers, put on a show at their school. Gretchen looks ghoulish and uncomfortable, and one of the brothers, Christian (Chris Lowell), notices. During lunch, Gretchen snaps at Margaret and Wallace for making out in front of them, and when Wallace insults her, Gretchen projectile vomits on him. At night, Gretchen sees an entity appearing in her room.

In class, Gretchen continues to feel unwell. She feels something poking her neck and thinks it’s Wallace, so she yells at him to stop. She asks the teacher to be excused, but she refuses to let Gretchen leave, so Gretchen walks over to a waste bin and begins to pee in it.

Abby later drives to Gretchen’s house to find her, but her father tells Abby to leave. Gretchen emerges from the bushes and runs to Abby’s car. They pull over, and Gretchen tells Abby about the presence that found her at the lake house and how it appears to her every night, not letting her live her life without this entity watching her. She asks Abby not to tell anybody.

Abby believes Gretchen was raped by Wallace at the lake house and that she has been traumatized by it. She goes to tell Gretchen’s parents, but they are angrier that the girls took drugs. Abby tries to tell the principal, but she thinks that Abby is trying to drag Gretchen’s name through the mud. When she suggests to Glee that Wallace raped Gretchen, Margaret becomes angry and thinks Abby is just jealous of her, and the girls cut her off. Wallace also punches Abby in the stomach for making up lies about him. Gretchen also becomes angry with Abby for telling people about her situation when she asked her not to.

The school hosts a carnival, where Abby is volunteered to sit in the dunk tank. Gretchen throws a ball at the target and gets Abby dunked, humiliating her in front of everyone. Gretchen takes it further by telling one of the teachers, Brother Morgan (Cameron Bass), that Abby thinks of him when she masturbates. Abby storms off, and Gretchen later goes to the bathroom, continuing to be tormented by the demonic entity.

At night, the Langs’ security alarm goes off, causing the entity possessing Gretchen to freak out and hurt her. When her dad goes to check on her, Gretchen says she is fine, but her face looks blistered, and her eyes are milky.

Gretchen returns to school looking refreshed for science class. As they begin to dissect pigs, the entity makes it so that Abby sees her pig moving, causing her to freak out and makes the class laugh at her. Meanwhile, Gretchen flirts with Wallace in front of Margaret, and he doesn’t even try to be subtle toward Gretchen. Margaret sees Gretchen drinking something that she calls a protein drink meant to help with losing weight since it takes away your appetite. Margaret begins drinking it, too, since she is insecure about her weight.

Later on, Glee finds a love letter in her locker from a secret admirer. Abby tries to talk to Margaret and tell her that she doesn’t need to take Gretchen’s drinks to lose weight, but she continues to ignore Abby. Gretchen suggests to Glee that Margaret wrote the letter, so Glee approaches Margaret and implies that they have already hooked up and that Glee already likes her. Margaret coldly dismisses her as a “dyke”, causing Glee to run to the bathroom crying. Gretchen tries to console her there with a brownie, but Glee begins to have an allergic reaction because there were nuts in there. Gretchen hid Glee’s EpiPen and makes her crawl around the bathroom looking for it before the other students and staff called for medical attention.

Abby visits Margaret at home since she has begun to feel ill from the protein drinks. Margaret regrets how she treated Glee. When Abby offers her food, it makes Margaret gag, and soon, a demonic tapeworm emerges from Margaret’s throat, which her dog pulls out. Margaret is taken to the hospital, and Abby tells Glee that the protein drink contained tapeworm eggs.

Abby goes to the mall to find the Lemon Brothers and speaks to Christian. He admits that he has some kind of gift that allows him to see certain entities after a traumatic experience involving the death of his mother. He tells Abby that Gretchen is possessed, and he reluctantly agrees to help perform an exorcism.

Abby sneaks into Gretchen’s house to drug her soda. Although Gretchen catches her, she passes out before she can attack Abby. She and Christian take Gretchen to the lake house to perform the exorcism. The demon attempts to make Gretchen seem innocent and in pain when Christian throws salt on her to hurt her flesh so the demon will leave. Abby says she learned that the demon’s name is Andras. The process appears to work until Andras makes Christian see an image of his mother telling him how she suffered in her final moments, causing him to abandon Abby.

Gretchen breaks free from her binds and goes to attack Abby, but she jabs Gretchen in the side with a fire poker. Andras begins to cause Gretchen more and more pain from the inside, but Abby uses the power of friendship to compel Andras, expelling him from Gretchen’s body by making her vomit. The demon forms itself from the goo and appears as a small, hideous creature that tries to attack the girls. Abby finds a bottle of liquor that Wallace left behind, and using a lighter, she sets Andras on fire, causing the demon to burn to death. Abby and Gretchen hold each other.

Later on, Gretchen and her family begin their move. Abby goes to say goodbye to her. While they are not sure if Andras is gone, they promise to continue being there for each other, and they reaffirm their love for one another.

The ending text states that Wallace dropped out of school after developing alcoholism and is now the school’s groundskeeper. Gretchen’s dad became the region’s top realtor and developed motivational self-help tapes. Christian got kicked out of his brothers’ group but is now the CEO of a frozen yogurt franchise. Glee works with helping people with allergies and led a movement to replace peanuts with pretzels as airline snacks. Margaret became a teen counselor helping others with body image issues and also wrote a book series on killer worms. Abby and Gretchen kept in touch and still spend summers at the lake.

CTTC

 

Abby Rivers and Gretchen Lang are best friends. While going to a lake house with their other friends Margaret and Glee, Gretchen is attacked and possessed by a demonic entity called Andras. Abby mistakenly believes that Gretchen's odd behavior stems from her getting raped at the lake house and that Margaret's boyfriend Wallace is the culprit. This alienates Abby from her friends, while Gretchen tricks Margaret into drinking a protein shake containing tapeworm eggs, infecting Margaret, while Gretchen feeds Glee a brownie that had nuts in it, causing her to suffer a near-fatal allergic reaction.

Abby gets help from a motivational speaker named Christian Lemon to help perform an exorcism on Gretchen. It almost works but Christian leaves when Andras appears to him as his dead mother. Abby uses the power of friendship to expel Andras from Gretchen's body, and they burn the demon to death.

Gretchen later moves away with her family, but she and Abby remain best friends and keep in touch.