PREY FOR THE DEVIL *** USA 2022 Dir: Daniel Stamm. 93 mins
Sister Ann (Jacqueline Byers) wants to use her past experiences to perform exorcisms, but the Catholic church is against women becoming exorcists. She then comes face to face with a demon entity from her past.
This was certainly well cast with Byers and Christian Navarro having some great chemistry as well as talent. They carried this film through a very typical supernatural / religious horror film.
A special mention must go to young actress Posy Taylor who’s breakout role shows just how talented she is. I was blown away by her performance as she pulled off such a creepy role and was one of the best parts of the film.
Daniel Stamm and the writing team (aka too many) manage to run through 93 minutes and provide absolutely nothing unique. Many of the ideas had obviously come from The Exorcist (1973). I’m all for paying homage to a legendary film of the sub-genre, but I don’t approve of taking too many ideas. Filmmaking is all about being creative, or at least it should be. If it weren’t for the talented cast, I probably wouldn’t have enjoyed this as much as I did.
They seemed to be trying to go for psychological but also packing it full of jump scares I saw coming. Having seen so many new horror films lately, I was quite disappointed by this one as I’d had high expectations but was met with too many cliches.
A redeeming quality would be the effects that, although very typical, were done well. The modern and feminist styling worked really well, adding far more drama than horror. Unfortunately the script gave everything away quite early on and nothing surprised me.
Review by Poppy Blundell