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Released by: Lionsgate
Released on: January 3rd, 2023.
Director: Daniel Stamm
Cast: Jacqueline Byers, Debora Zhecheva, Christian Navarro
Year: 2022
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Prey For The Devil – Movie Review:
When Daniel Stamm's 2022 film, Prey For The Devil, opens, we see a young girl hidden away in her room praying. Outside the bedroom door, her mother, seemingly irate about something, tries to get in. Eventually we see that the mother behind the girl, initially combing her hair quite calming, is possessed.
From here, we jump to the present day where that girl is now an adult named Ann (Jacqueline Byers). She's dedicated her life to the Roman Catholic Church and works as a nun. The church transfers her to Boston where she is to assist at a school setup to teach and train priests in the rite of exorcism. While Ann is only to serve as a nurse, she manages to sneak her way into many of the classes and learn much of what the priest would be learning herself. Eventually Father Quinn (Colin Salmon) realizes Ann's propensity for exorcism and soon enough, she's wearing a priest's collar herself.
As time passes, Ann starts to suspect that one of the young patients in this hospital, Natalie (Posy Taylor), is possessed by the same demon that possessed her mother all those years ago. With some help from fellow student Father Dante (Christian Navarro), Ann gets to work, hoping to cast out the demon inside Natalie before it's too late.
In addition to a seriously hokey twist ending, Prey For The Devil suffers from a really slow middle stretch and a whole lot of predictability. There are interesting elements set up early in the film and the idea of a female falling into the role of a Roman Catholic Priest in order to perform an exorcism showed some mild promise, but the reality of the situation is that if you’ve seen an exorcism movie before, even the director’s earlier and far superior The Last Exorcism from 2010, then you really won’t have too much difficulty at all figuring out where this one is going and when it’s going to get there.
It’s a shame. Production values are decent and while the PG-13 rating rightly predicts that things aren’t going to get too intense or visceral in the horror and effects department, the movie does look good. The soundtrack is pretty solid and the overall sound design, especially in the exorcism scenes, is quite involving. The cast are also pretty decent, doing the best that they can with a mediocre script from Robert Zappia, who penned Halloween H20 and, oddly enough, a lot of Tom And Jerry cartoons from 2014 to 2017. Jacqueline Byers is just fine in the lead, she’s likeable and as believable as she can be in an otherwise fairly unbelievable role and situation. Colin Salmon does fine work as the priest who sees Ana’s potential, he plays his role fine, and Christian Navarro as Father Dante is decent enough, if not especially memorable.
Had the pacing been tightened up and more originality been put into the script, this could have been a contender but as it stands, in this current incarnation, Prey For The Devil brings very little to the overdone possession/exorcism genre that we haven’t seen before, and done better at that.
Prey For The Devil – UHD Review:
Prey For The Devil comes to UHD in an HEVC encoded 2160p 4k transfer with HDR10 and Dolby Vision enhancement framed at 2.39.1 and it looks really good. This was shot digitally so there are no problems to note with grain or print damage, the image is literally spotless. Detail looks strong for the most part, it’s generally impressive in pretty much every frame of the movie and often, if not always, hits reference quality levels. We get great depth and texture throughout as well, while color reproduction and black levels are pretty much perfect. Compression is a non-issue and there are no problems with any visible crush, which is a big deal here as much of the film takes place in dark interiors or in the case of the opening scene, the darkness of space itself.
The UHD offers both Dolby Atmos and Dolby TrueHD 7.1 options as well as French and Spanish language Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound tracks. Removable subtitles are provided in English, English SDH, French and Spanish. The Atmos mix sounds fantastic, it’s very engaging and enveloping, doing an excellent job of putting you in the middle of the action and with plenty of impressive surround usage noticeable throughout. Bass response is very strong as well, your subwoofer will get a bit of a work out in a few scenes, but it never buries the dialogue.
Extra features start off with an audio commentary with director Daniel Stamm and actress Jacqueline Byers that goes over where some of the ideas for the movie came from, the casting, what it was like on set, some of the effects work, what went into creating the different characters that we see on screen and more. It covers pretty much all the topics you’d expect it to.
There are a few featurettes here as well, the first of which is the forty-two minute Possessed: Creating Prey For The Devil. It’s a well-made but fairly standard behind the scenes piece that interviews the lead cast members, the director and a few crew members about their experiences making the picture. The nine minute A Lullaby of Terror interviews the movie’s composer, Nathan Barr, about his process and what went into creating his score for the feature. The short The Devil's Tricks: Visual Effects is an interesting but too short four minute exploration at how some of the movie’s digital effects set pieces were conjured up.
The two hour Prey For The Devil Cast Read: The Original First Draft Screenplay is pretty much just what it sounds like, a group reading done via video conferencing wherein the main cast members and Stamm participate in an early read through of the script, refining character moments along the way.
The disc also includes an interesting sixty-one minute documentary called Speak No Evil: A Real Exorcist And Church Psychologist Discuss Possession wherein screenwriter Robert Zappia participates in a discussion with Richard Gallagher and Vincent Lampert about the realities of exorcism and some of the details surrounding the actual practice.
This release also comes packaged with a slipcover and an insert that contains a code that can be redeemed for a digital download of the feature.
Prey For The Devil – The Final Word:
Prey For The Devil boasts good production values and a decent cast but turns out to be predictable and poorly paced. That said, those who did enjoy the movie will appreciate Lionsgate giving the picture and excellent presentation and a very impressive array of extra features.