The Cleansing Hour 2019

Two childhood friends, Ryan Guzman as Max and Kyle Gallner as Drew, run The Cleansing Hour, a wildly popular livestream that bills itself as a modern exorcism show with a faux priestly host called Father Max. In reality, every possession is fake, meticulously scripted to lure viewers, swell their follower counts, and drive merch and subscriptions. Max is consumed by the urge to pull in the largest crowd possible, while Drew’s fiancée Lane, played by Alix Angelis, stays supportive even when she’s asked to step in as the possessed if the actor for a given episode doesn’t show up.

As the stream kicks off, Lane’s possession feels dangerously real, and the crew is picked off one by one by a merciless, unseen force. The panic swells as the demon targets the show’s core, leaving Drew and Max as the last two standing. Lane’s ordeal forces both men to confront secrets they’d kept hidden, and the audience’s numbers spiral upward with every shocking moment.

Max is thrust into the center of the unraveling truth, and in a tense confession he reveals the show’s facade to the viewers. But the revelations go deeper: he recalls a brutal upbringing at a Catholic school where a sadistic nun presided over punishments that blurred lines between sin and safety. He describes a moment when he killed the nun to protect Drew, a memory that haunts him long after. He also opens up about a past life as a priest, who left the church after witnessing unchecked abuse within the priesthood. He explains that his decision to launch The Cleansing Hour was born from the belief that it wouldn’t hurt anyone, a belief that is now unraveling before their audience.

As numbers rise, Drew realizes the demon is using the stream for its own purposes and cuts the feed, only to reconnect later after decoding the creature’s hints and identifying it as Aamon on a database. The show resumes, and the demon drives them to reveal even more damning truths. It forces Max and Lane into a final, explosive disclosure—that Max and Lane had slept together before Lane met Drew. This revelation strains their friendships to the breaking point, but the growing audience compels them to proceed with the exorcism rites. The demon is driven from Lane, yet a fragile peace cannot hold for long in this high-stakes game.

The trick the demon saves for last is a devastating reveal: it was Lucifer himself, not Aamon, who possessed Lane to infiltrate the stream and seize control of the 17 million viewers now watching. The possessed audience turns on those around them, a wave of violence that sweeps through the set and beyond, even reaching the President’s son among the viewers. The escalating chaos underscores the terrifying power of the livestream and the price of crossing lines that should never be crossed.

The end credits roll over scenes of mayhem sparked by the possession, flashing across screens around the world and leaving a chilling reminder of how thin the line between performance and real peril can be.