Prey For the Devil Review: The Devil Wants In, But Do We?
Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
Sister Ann hopes to become the church’s first female exorcist, driven by childhood trauma from her mother’s possession by the devil – something she is also in therapy for. So, save for the female exorcist angle and the fact that she is seeing a trained mental health professional, the horror movie Prey for the Devil has precious little to offer in terms of new scares for an exorcism-centered flick. Although it does explore interesting themes of guilt, shame, and trauma.
Directed by Daniel Stamm, Prey for the Devil stars Jacqueline Byers as Ann, a spirited young woman of the church who secretly sneaks into exorcism classes. When she becomes entangled in the dangerous possession case of ten-year-old Natalie (Posy Taylor), she soon discovers the stakes are far more personal than she ever imagined.
Set in a Catholic Church with an exorcism school and a restricted ward full of possessed patients, Prey for the Devil unfolds chronologically but is interspersed with disturbing flashbacks of Ann’s traumatic childhood with her possessed mother. Nuns aren’t encouraged to perform exorcisms, so the first half-hour of the film follows Ann’s attempts to learn on her own, eventually convincing Father Quinn (Colin Salmon) to train her. But eager to be more than a trainee, Ann performs an unauthorized ritual with her friend Father Dante (Christian Navarro), which leads them to a lot of trouble. And when ten-year-old Natalie’s case gets violently out of control, Anna once again tries to overstep her limits.
What’s most surprising about Prey for the Devil is its subtle pro-choice stance, despite being a heavily religious film centered on the Catholic Church and the Vatican. One of the possessed victims is a young woman who suffers a miscarriage and is consumed by guilt because she hadn’t wanted the child. Ann reassures her that it’s okay to have those feelings, offering a perspective that feels unexpected in a movie with such strong religious themes. But of-course, this is a 93-minute-long horror movie, so it’s hard to establish what the creators were hoping to do with that thread of thought.
The second half of Prey for the Devil is predictable, slow, and boring, with almost no genuinely spooky moments. It’s packed with the usual bone-cracking, child-crawling-up-the-wall type of scenes. While a few scenes are creepy and gross, the film is largely not-so-scary. It’s a shame because both the cast and the cinematic setting are solid, but the storytelling feels insipid. From the very start, the devil seems intent on possessing Ann, yet the film never explains why. The climax delivers a conveniently successful exorcism – interestingly, without much holy chanting from the Bible.
If you want to see a fun, fresh horror film about possession, try the Australian indie film ‘Talk to Me’ instead.
Prey for the Devil is on Netflix and Prime Video.
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