Prey for the Devil is a weirdly self-aware demonic nun possession film about the Catholic Church’s long history of abuse and coverups, but it’s not entirely clear how much of this movie is intentional irony and how much is just messy editing for the sake of time or an emotionally uplifting ending. Rest assured, if you are worried about seeing this movie because of the jump scares and you, like me and all of my friends who came with, have seen this movie’s trailer approximately thirty times in the past two months, you have seen every scary moment of the movie from beginning to end. Note, I said “scary,” not “creepy”. There are some creepypasta moments that you will enjoy listening to the children sitting several rows behind you in the theater shriek at, but otherwise, Prey for the Devil is basically a game of who can remember the scene from the trailer fastest, and who can piece together the very, very limited breadcrumbs of a pretty small trail to the smallest twist imaginable. We actually spent a lot of time talking through much better twists as the movie went on: why isn’t she suffering from delusions like her schizophrenic mother? how is that girl going to get out of having murdered three people very publicly? Maybe she murdered her mother?
The film is not entirely unsatisfying? Jaqueline Byers is a completely passable actress–who has some truly excellent moments when she’s winking and nodding at the other classmates in the Exorcism School scenes–where she also lives? Her outfits are great, especially the inexplicable priest cosplay she does toward the end. Gives a lot of Ready or Not vibes. A lot of Crawl energy. Remember that movie? No? I made that last movie up, if you click that link it just takes you to an empty page where you see a photo of yourself a little disappointed. I wonder a little if the movie is set in Boston to allow Byers to retain a neutral accent, but then everyone around her has a slightly different ostentatious accent.
Byer’s character Ann is in an odd and kind of narratively interesting position where she is so intent on moving past her childhood trauma that she’s willing to ascribe demonic possession to just about any mental illness, despite being warned by her professor explicitly that there be some major ethical issues with doing that. The prof who gently gives her therapy as a sort of plot device in the movie without Ann knowing it literally gives her a self-help book with the word “trauma” in the title to help us understand that she should maybe lay off the demon stuff, but she valorizes a different professor whose entire job at the school is to jump to conclusions first and then introspect about whether or not his entire existence is based on centuries of patriarchal abuse of people systemically dehumanized by the Church. Ann literally uses that word, “dehumanize,” when speaking with that professor, but she’s not at all describing the rite of exorcism, which is so fun. It’s never really addressed how messed up it is that Ann resorts to exorcism as a way of running from the fact that her mom was ill and abusive her entire childhood, rather than the Devil toying with her for Unspecified Reasons even through the end of the film.
Probably the most damning plot element is the fact that despite being directly responsible for three to six deaths in the movie in fairly public ways, the child Natalie is completely unaccountable to any law enforcement entity. She’s imprisoned deep underground for hours before what is intimated is the world’s slowest perp walk by the Boston police, who presumably have more important things to do than arrest suspected murderers, I guess. The movie cannot have you thinking too hard about the justice system’s selective application of the law, especially as it concerns the Catholic Church, so they never really resolve that issue.
You should probably see this movie before the end of the weekend, because you’re unlikely to see it any other time in your life. Happy to see it again as part of a ritual if, in fact, they come out with a sequel from the demon’s perspective, just staring through people’s mouths, but I find it unlikely to occur. Scoring this half a Babadook.
