OK, so it wasn't "The Last Exorcism" after all. Here's "Part II," an 88-minute bore without the nervy, shaky-camera, found-footage conceit, without the doubting exorcist's moment of truth, without the chills the low-budget original served up.

"Part II" is every bit as cheap and far more generic, nothing more than a ghost story masquerading as "The Devil Made Her Do It."

Ashley Bell, as Nell, the teen lusted after by Lucifer, seems exhausted, frazzled, out of her acting league and nowhere near her teen years in this sequel. Nell has stumbled into New Orleans, hounded during Mardi Gras even as she tries to convince doctors and mental health halfway house staffers that she's not crazy.

But she's seeing her dead daddy (Louis Herthum). She's hearing voices.

Dogs bark at her passing, gorillas in the zoo act up. And every Mardi Gras reveler in a scary mask stares her down. Frank (Muse Watson), who runs Deveroux Halfway House, could not be more wrong when he assures her, "Whatever you're running from won't find you here."

"Last Exorcism II" is a slower than slow thriller built around Bell, who isn't at her most subtle or empathetic here. There's fear and the burden of "If he seduces you, all hope is lost." Not that Bell gets that across.

It's a film of cheap shriek scares and fizzing frights that pack no punch. The tropes of the genre - exorcists who have the tools but face long odds, bleeding walls, birds that fly into a house where Nell hides out - are there. But the effects are skimpy and cheesy, with that crazy contortion business that the first "Last Exorcist" took to extremes.