Prey for the Devil

There is plenty wrong with Prey for the Devil, but despite cringy moments of profound seriousness around a rather silly conceit, I was on board. It’s been decades since an exorcism film left me feeling unsettled. Prey for the Devil’s tactics might be cheap, but they worked on me.

Rather good actors do indeed keep a straight face, as does the film overall. And Stamm’s jump scares aren’t bad, as they go. He hasn’t made a very suspenseful movie, but he’s avoided both dullness and unintentional laughs.

The effects are decent, the acting desultory in “Prey for the Devil,” a School for Exorcists thriller that promises more than it delivers.

The most frustrating thing about Prey For The Devil is that there seems to be a good movie somewhere in this patchwork of themes and pastiches.

More often than not, we can ignore the message if we’d like and just enjoy a scary movie. Prey for the Devil, however, seems to have been developed as deliberate propaganda.

There’s only so much you can do with this genre of movie. You already know it’s good vs evil and each character is going to have their own trials and tribulations. I found the characters to be likable and interesting. The writing and acting were good and the movie flowed nicely. Let’s face it, there was only one time a movie like the Exorcist can be released. I think those who are raking this movie over the coals have an expectation issue. If you want a good escape from the world for 90 minutes with a few jumps and gasps along the way, you could do a lot worse than going out and seeing this movie. Worth the price of admission.

This is a largely forgettable exorcism film that does very little to differentiate itself from the countless other exorcism films. The only really interesting thing to note is that it is probably the most over-the-top with near constant jump scares and body shock. It actually becomes laughable at some times because it invests so much time in cheap thrills and no time on character or even story really. Every spoken line is purely to move us onto the next jump scare or body shock. It’s fast paced so a guilty pleasure but also it’s so shallow and the writing lacks any creativity.

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Yes, it was only a matter of time before we needed inclusion even for exorcisms, because I mean, why not? But what's the point, if its creators show so little desire to do things worth the investment of their time? I think I should mention that there are moments that work in terms of atmosphere, very minimal to tell the truth, but past that, all the tricks of exorcism films are here, as tedious as they are predictable.

¿Posesiones demoníacas y monjas? Que innovador, películas de este tipo las hay a patadas y son todas iguales.