Prey for the Devil

Prey for the Devil

In response to a global rise in demonic possessions, the Catholic Church reopens exorcism schools to train priests in the Rite of Exorcism. On this spiritual battlefield, an unlikely warrior rises: a young nun, Sister Ann. Thrust onto the spiritual frontline with fellow student Father Dante, Sister Ann finds herself in a battle for the soul of a young girl and soon realizes the Devil has her right where he wants her.

  • Released: 2022-10-28
  • Runtime: 120 minutes
  • Genre: Horror, Thrillers
  • Stars: Jacqueline Byers, Virginia Madsen, Ben Cross, Colin Salmon, Christian Navarro, Nicholas Ralph, Lisa Palfrey, Tom Forbes, Velizar Binev, Owen Davis, Debora Zhecheva, Cora Kirk, Posy Taylor, Elizabeth Gibson
  • Director: Daniel Stamm
 Comments
  • rockbunny-73250 - 5 January 2024
    Enjoyed it!
    Im not sure on the low score everyone is giving but I thought this was brilliant. It wasn't tacky, it wasn't overly Hollywood. But had a dark, sinister feel to it with good effects. Imagery was nice, old buildings and a cold feel to the atmosphere.

    The main leading woman was a great actor and very believable. I would say it was on par with Stigmata.

    Storyline was good, felt eerie, music soundtrack was the right choice.

    Ann's mother in it freaked me out from the beginning. That woman looked like she could tear you apart. Very believable her part in it.

    I would love to go to an Exorcist school, sign me up!
  • parry_na - 6 October 2023
    Predictable but entertaining horror ...
    There have been many exorcism films produced in the fifty years since 1973's 'The Exorcist'. So how come none have come close to the original? It might seem unfair to compare possession films, but William Friedkin's take on William Peter Blatty's screenplay was so wholly dark and horrifying, and cast such a huge shadow, it's perhaps not astonishing nothing since has come close.

    Here we have a fairly formulaic exorcism film, featuring impressive production values and often very strong acting. The story goes through the usual paces and produces a few moments that might chill the viewer. If this is the first such film you ever saw, you might be impressed, if a little bored.

    Daniel Stamm's direction makes good use of the locations and goes through the motions of CGI which works some of the time and looks ludicrous at others. Performances from Posy Taylor as Natalie, Jacqueline Byers as Sestra Ann, Colin Salmon as Ojciec Quinn and a frail-looking Ben Cross as Kardynal Matthews (he died ten days after completion) are notable in a sea of good performances.

    Yet 'Prey for the Devil' buckles beneath the shadow that falls across it, and remains a box-ticking exercise in emulating scenes from other such productions. My score is 5 out of 10.
  • jpmacdusa-855-83323 - 11 July 2023
    Pray for this to be over...
    Jaysus what a woeful flick!...... Useless priests who haven't paid their electricity bills versus Sith powered demons, but wait Sister Mary Lou from the exorcism Avengers is here to save the day....the demon can virtually do whatever it wants but instead decides to hang out in a kid who needs a hair cut and a new agent...the ending is completely and utter baffling! ....But if you want to see a film where Colin Salmon doesn't do a Sean Bean then this the one for you...also is this trying to set-up an Marvel style exorcism universe, with Virginia Maddison as a kind of Nick Fury?....her rent must be massive or maybe it's college bills...
  • enigma49 - 27 December 2022
    Really bad
    It's a standard boring exorcism movie - who wants to watch that these days? I love horror movies and I'm not too demanding and quite easy to scare, but watching people grimace and contort themselves in front of the camera in a "creepy" way is ultimately just annoying. No, a few cracking sound effects, a dark demon voice and a woman as the main character don't make it any better. Apart from that nothing spectacular happens because the main character does not undergo any interesting development during the film - it's all about throwing Bible verses at growling demons. Don't waste your time, watch something else, pet your cat or just go to bed earlier. Your dreams are probably more entertaining than this movie.
  • mjscostconsult - 18 December 2022
    Enjoyable
    I'd heard mixed reviews about this but had been looking forward to watching it. It didn't disappoint. Quite a good story to it and kept me interested throughout. Some of the acting was a bit "hammy" but thought the lead put in a good performance. Special effects were good enough and as a film it doesn't rely upon gore and shock as horror for entertainment. As with Exorcist III it has the intention of the viewer having to consider the storyline - so if horror of that kind of style is of interest I think you will enjoy this. A slasher or Terrifier it is not.

    I'll be intrigued to see if there will be a follow up and I believe there could be some mileage in a prequel as well.
  • rivermann37 - 15 December 2022
    William Peter Blatty's 1973's The Exorcist is 50 years old next December and still blows garbage like this out of thew water
    I actuly thought this looked good in the trailer but was I wrong! Firstly it was all over the place, was it an exorcist type movie.. NO, was it a horor film based around demonic possession YES but not really, despit being set in a school for catholic priests learning to perform exorsicms i didn't see a single right of exorcism being correctly performed once, not even when father Dante and sister anne were aparently perfoming an exorcism on father dantes sister at her home. Rather than watching the two of them recite the two person right of exorcism we've all seen and heard in other much better films like 1973 The Exorcist or the 2011 The Rite, father dante procedded to mumble a few words from his bible, not the book of catholic right of exorcisms, while sister anne sits on the girls bed behaving more more like a girlfriend consoling her drunk friend after a break up than any kind of priest in the throws of expelling a dangerouse deamon from a possessed women, and then the whole thing was over in less than two minutes lol these two supposed exorcists aparently thought the whole thing was done after litturaly doing next to nothing, not even calling an ambulance or doctor t come and check on his sister after a deamon nearly broke through her stomache! Where were the hours, days weeks or even months of reciting the right exorcism, the having to restrain his sister during the use of holy water or her projectile vomiting, talking in tongues? After just a few minutes of nothing really the whole thing was done just because some candles relit! And then with no explanation why we find out in the next scene that his sister commited suiced and the heads of the school all knew about the not an exorcism, exorcism and sister anne, and only sister ann gets in trouble, despite it being father dantes sister and it all being father dantes idea he seems to get off with out even a ticking off infact cut to the next scene and sister anne is back at her convent but wait here comes father dante again with a propersistion the little girl back at the school is being transferd to the dreaded place of no return, and despite the fact that neither of them are exorcists or even it seems know how to perfom an exorscism and despite sister anne no longer attending the school for exorcists father dantes suggests they dress sister anne up in a priest outfit for some reason maybe as a really bad disguise to get into the hospital despite her not doing anythig to hide her face or the long blonde hair she wore down making it plainly obviouse she was a she and not a he, they both trot off to the hospital to perform yet another not an exorcism, exorcism on what appparently is such a dangerouse deamon it killed an experianced old priest/ real exorcist and and two orderlys in the back of the ambulance on the way to the hospital but these two "exorcists" one an ex gang banger (which again seems to have absolutly no relavence in the film other than the writter must of thought it was cool or something) and the other a young and very pretty nun ( with a less than vertues past ) that claims to of wanted nothing more (due to her childhood with her mother) than to be able to study to be an actual exorcist and one day be able to perform exorcisms on the possessed does everything possible to not make that happen by breaking i think ever rule there was in that place. Basicly they then go on to somehow walk straright into what should be a place more secure than any maximum security prison without anyone asking who they are or how they got in they proced to have full access to the child/deamon and it seems the whole building all to them selves after telling the other student priests to bugger off, who all for no reason at all are in the basment of this hospital hanging around outside this kids cell for no reason as far as i can tell and without any teachers even though this deamon just killed three people and non of them are trained exorcists.. It was at this point I stopped really paying to much mind to what was happening and started checking my social media.

    In short there's nothing to see here.. and even less to read in my review i was so underwelmd by the crapness of the movie I couldn't even be bothered to put much effort in to the review, honestly this the worste review i've ever written it even has spelling mistakes because i can't be bothered to spell check it!

    Thats how bad the movie was!
  • nicolasroop - 2 December 2022
    Interesting story, but ultimately stumbles over it's horror themes
    See, this could have been a very good movie. The story is interesting and it had a good message throughout. The actors are all good and convincing. However, it falls into the bin of generic PG-13 exorcism/haunting/ghost movies. It just doesn't go far enough into making it's subject matter scary. This movie could have benifited from having an R rating and from showing a bit more of the gruesome fates of some of the characters. It also falls too far into the excorism movie tropes to not make itself predictable and silly at times. I want to rate it higher because I did love the story, but when it came to any scary moment in the film, it just felt like a waste of time and nothing new. Overall, I can recommend it to people who enjoy horror or religous/excorcism movie, but just be aware that when it starts to get to the scary stuff, it isn't scary at all.

    2.5 demon ghosts out of 5.
  • comps-784-38265 - 19 November 2022
    Pray for the 2nd half of the film to end
    This film reminds me of Game of Thrones.

    What? I hear you say.

    Game of thrones was written by a master story teller (George RR Martin) and when he hadn't written an ending it was left to imcompetents (dumb and dumber) to write the disasterous debacle of an ending.

    The first half of Prey for the Devil is very well written.

    Before watching it I checked Imdb and the score was only 5.2.

    As I got into the film i was pleasantly surprised, It was building into a decent horror thriller.

    It successfully entwined modern church and technology and superstitious horror very well.

    I couldn't understand why it had such a low imdb score ?

    Around halfway through the film I understood.

    The story takes a sudden left hand turn into blandness and unoriginality.

    ( I see there is one person credited for the screen play and two others for the 'story')

    Whoever wrote the first half did a good job. Whoever did the 2nd half should consider a change in career.

    Would I watch it again ? Not a chance 4/10 and that 4 is for the first half.
  • rcr-37510 - 5 November 2022
    Bland
    This movie was a slog to get through. There's nothing "wrong" with it per se if you're comparing it to other movies of this type. It's just flat. Not engaging or scary. The thrills are weak. Cheap tricks. At times it feels like it doesn't know which direction to go. They have a woman in a Catholic priest's collar which I felt was mildly disrespectful.

    It's so middle-of-the-road that there's not much else to comment on. You'll watch it and forget it. You could do much worse if you need something to watch for 1½ hours.

    But you could do much better too. The Exorcism of Emily Rose was far superior if it's an exorcism film you're looking for. I'd recommend that instead.