Spooky Season 2022: Prey for the Devil Review

Prey for the Devil had a tough journey before finally hitting theatres this past weekend. Not only does that include a title change but also several release dates delays with it originally scheduled to hit theatres well over a year ago in January 2021. But now it’s finally hit the silver screen just in time for Halloween. In a year full of great horror films, Prey for the Devil is unfortunately one of the weaker ones even if it’s far from the worst. The film follows Sister Ann (Byers) who prepares to perform an exorcism and comes face to face with a demonic force with ties to her past. It also explores Ann becoming the first female student to be trained to perform exorcisms.

Not every horror film needs to be scary to work or be effective, but Prey for the Devil is clearly only interested in making its audience jump at every possible chance it gets. It’s full of jump scares from start to finish with most either being fake outs or entirely predictable as soon as the scene starts. There isn’t a single one that works, and they start to become rather annoying when that’s the only thing the filmmakers seemed to put any care or focus into. It also doesn’t help that despite a bunch of creepy material and an atmosphere full of potential, it’s never scary or does anything remotely interesting with those. It’s never a good sing when any horror film utilizes CGI in its most intense moments especially as much as this one does.

Meanwhile, the film is almost identical to nearly every single exorcism film that’s been released in the past 15 years. Outside of maybe the central premise, there’s absolutely nothing new here and it does frustratingly little with the very few new ideas it has. Everything that happens can be seen from a mile away including one of the bigger reveals which is painfully obvious from the start. It commits one of the biggest sins a horror film can do and that’s to be boring beyond belief. When one knows everything that’s coming and the scares aren’t working in the slightest, it makes for a rather tedious experience. Despite having a very short 93-minute running time, the film’s poor pacing makes it feel much longer.

There are a few things that keep this from being a complete trainwreck and the biggest is Byers’ lead performance. She’s genuinely really good here and sells every bit of her characters journey while making for a likeable protagonist to follow. In fact, pretty well all of the acting is solid with Colin Salmon being a standout as Father Dante and Madsen doing the best with the few scenes she has as Dr. Peters. It’s just a shame that the film has a decent setup too and a decent first act that had potential but it ultimately fails to take it anywhere worthwhile or interesting.

In the end, Prey for the Devil is a film that is destined to be completely forgotten about within a short period of time. It fails to do anything new with the exorcism genre and offers little more than boredom. It may be better than a lot of similar films in recent memory but that’s not exactly a glowing compliment nor a recommendation to see it. For those who love these types of films, even the weaker ones, it is at least worth a shot when it hits streaming but anyone else can skip it and be totally fine.

still courtesy of Lionsgate

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Connor Carey

www.connorsmoviereviews.com/