Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Daniel Stamm
Starring: Jacqueline Byers, Colin Salmon, Christian Navarro, Lisa Palfrey, Nicholas Ralph, Ben Cross,
Virginia Madsen
In horror, the exorcism sub-genre is rivalled only by the zombie movie in
terms of being played out. William Friedkin and William Peter Blatty laid
out a template with The Exorcist and filmmakers have pretty
much stuck rigidly to it ever since. You know exactly what to expect from
these movies. There'll be a priest struggling with some form of guilt and a
possessed young woman writhing on a bed screaming obscenities while the
special effects crew pull strings and levers to make sores and welts appear
on her flesh. It'll all end in a sort of spiritual smackdown, usually in a
bedroom, as the priest overcomes his metaphorical demons to battle a literal
demon.
With 2010's The Last Exorcism, director Daniel Stamm deviated away from the formula by positing a
Protestant pastor as his protagonist rather than the usual Catholic priest,
but while the denomination may have changed, we still got all the usual
tropes and clichés of the sub-genre. Now with
Prey for the Devil, Stamm gives us a female exorcist, but that's really the only way his film
deviates from the template.
Sister Ann (Jacqueline Byers) is a twentysomething novice nun who
works in a Catholic hospital adjoining an "Exorcist school" in
Massachussetts. While the priests, led by Father Quinn (Colin Salmon), perform exorcisms in the basement, Ann and her colleagues heal the
wounds the "patients" have endured in the process. I'm pretty sure if an
institution like this really existed in the US, the FBI would probably raze
it to the ground like Waco, but let's just go with it shall we?
Ann becomes attached to Natalie (Posy Taylor), a young girl
possessed by a demon who seems to be the same entity that took control of
Ann's mother when she was a child herself. Displaying an ability to control
the demon with her compassionate ways, Ann impresses Father Quinn, who
defies the institute by allowing her to sit in on his lectures, which are
otherwise forbidden to women. Ann befriends a novice priest, Father
Dante (Christian Navarro), who asks her to take a stab at exorcising
a demon that has possessed his sister. As Ann embarks on a new clandestine
career of moonlighting as an exorcist, she begins to worry Old Nick himself
has a personal vendetta against her.
Prey for the Devil takes itself awfully seriously, which
would be fine if it was bringing anything remotely novel to the exorcism
movie table. But watching the film present us with the usual scenes of
religious figures wrestling with guilt and shame, interspersed with FX heavy
set-pieces of kids crawling on the ceiling, you find yourself questioning
the point of continually rehashing this stuff. The only thing that's new
here is a tepid confrontation of the Catholic Church's misogyny towards its
female recruitment policies, but otherwise the church is let off the hook.
Given all the scandals of the last few decades, the idea of children being
kept in a Catholic institution and essentially experimented on should be
more horrifying than the idea that they're possessed, but the movie is very
much in the church's corner.
Byers is a bright spark, managing to add some humanity to a character that
likely read as one-dimensional on the page. Salmon makes for an effective
mentor/authority figure, bringing a Patrick Stewart quality to his Father
Quinn. Virginia Madsen does some good work as Ann's secular teacher.
Kudos to the cast for committing to this, but playing this narrative with
such a straight face does little to make the movie an engaging spooky season
watch.
