Prey for the Devil – Film Review

The Roman Catholic Church combats a global rise in demonic possessions by reopening schools to train priests to perform exorcisms. Although nuns are forbidden to perform this ritual, a professor recognizes Sister Ann’s gifts and agrees to train her. Thrust onto the spiritual frontline, she soon finds herself in a battle for the soul of a young girl who’s possessed by the same demon that tormented her own mother years earlier.

Am I the only one who was under the impression that the subgenre of possession horror films had died off a long time ago by now? Sadly, that’s not the case as it seems, as we now have a brand new one in the form of Prey for the Devil, directed by Daniel Stamm and for some reason, released wide by Lionsgate.

By all accounts, this feels like one of those extremely cheaply made movies you’d find inside of the bargain bin at your local Walmart and not something a studio would release in theatres. A lot of this film reminded me of some of the worst horror movies of the 2010s such as The Devil Inside and One Missed Call.

At this point, I genuinely think studios need to take a step back and actually think about why they believe that possession movies are still in the market and why they think that audiences are still going to be terrified of them. Unless a filmmaker comes along and absolutely changes the formula one-hundred-percent, not many people still care about these movies.

Unfortunately, Stamm’s film is a total nightmare of a film to have to sit through as despite being a supernatural horror film, it’s one of the most boring and uneventful movies of the entire year. Robert Zappia‘s script is loaded with an insane amount of clichés that are so frequent and annoying to the point where it’s physically cringe-inducing.

Throughout the entire movie we follow Sister Ann, who is one of the blandest lead protagonists in a horror film this year. She’s a nun and she desperately wants to take on this case and wants to prove that possessions are real. That’s basically the extent of her character. I feel bad for Jacqueline Byers, though, because you can tell that she had fun with this movie and her performance here is quite great. It’s just that her character is nothing special at all.

This movie really held back a lot as well, I felt. It’s something that a lot of demonic possession movies do for some reason and I have no idea why. Why would you even make a movie like this and not go all out? If you’re going to make one, you should have fun with it. You should go crazy and do as many wild things as you can, but for whatever reason, Prey for the Devil feels like it was trying to be tame.

With that being said, Prey for the Devil is not the worst thing you’ll ever see this whole year. There are worse horror movies out there that this year had to offer but at the same time, this is definitely a terrible movie that you should do your best to avoid at all costs.

Prey for the Devil is a shockingly bland and scare-free supernatural horror film that further proves why the demonic possession subgenre needs to die off already.