Prey For The Devil

Let The
Nun Shine In

Prey For The Devil
Directed by Daniel Stamm
2022 USA Lionsgate

Warning: Light spoilers.

I’m not an expert on exorcist movies, it has to be said but, I do enjoy the odd exorcism story when they come up. Nevertheless when Colin Salmon himself presented a clip from this movie to the audience at FrightFest last year, I couldn’t help but feel a little lukewarm to the idea of seeing yet another one (although Salmon himself is always good to watch on screen). I didn’t think much of the title either (although puns are usually a phenomenon I have a lot of sympathy for). So I didn’t rush out and see this a couple of weeks later on its UK theatrical release but, now I’ve finally caught up to the movie, I think maybe I should have done.

Prey For The Devil is a well oiled machine of an exorcism film and, although it’s chock full of the usual clichés and tropes of almost every other exorcism movie going, I actually found the formulaic episodes of the tale quite comforting. Yes, this is a horror film but it’s not really a very scary one... that being said, though, it’s actually got some interesting things happening in it, which made it worth the price of admission for me (and worth the price of the Blu Ray at some point too, I think).

The story tells of young nun Ann, played by Jacqueline Byers, who has an interest in the rituals and realities of exorcism due to her mother being demonically possessed when she was a kid... or schizophrenic, as her psychiatric assessor played by Virginia Madsen suggests. It’s apparently required training for nuns assigned to her location to undergo a course of psychiatric evaluation.

And where she is, is working as a nurse in an exorcism school in the US. The vatican has decided to open them around the globe in response to the rise in demonic possessions (according to the opening blurb on the film) though nuns are not allowed to study there but, instead, nurse the ‘patients’. Exorcism school is only for the male priests, apparently. However, the lead tutor, played by the always brilliant Colin Salmon, can see her potential and agrees to let her sit in on his lessons, due to special circumstances which manifest early in the film... which become more obvious as her back story is gradually revealed.

From then on it’s the usual exorcism tropes but with a few added twists to the story structure, which means it never gets boring. Part of that is the slow reveal of Ann’s history. I think the structure of that is dictated by the presence of the little girl who Ann is trying to help in varying degrees throughout the movie. Frankly, if the back story was told in full earlier on, the reveal would be superfluous as it’s really easy to guess, as soon as the audience is armed with the obvious puzzle piece. So the director and writers cannily hold back on the most clarifying piece of information until just a little while before the ‘twist’ reveal.

The exorcism scenes are really nice and go ‘full monty’ fairly quickly, once the plot and characters have been set up. There are some nicely surreal moments in the movie too. Such as a scene where a little girl’s hair is plunging down her own throat and when two of the priests finally pull it all out to stop her choking, it’s being held onto by a demonic hand coming out of her mouth. There’s another great moment where the girl holds her palms over her eyes and two bloody holes form on the back of her hands where the eyes would be, as maggots start to drop out from the holes. It’s good stuff I don’t think I’ve seen done in film before (although if you think these filmmakers have swiped these particular moments from other movies, please let me know in the comments section below).

Some of the more surreal scenes don’t always make sense in terms of the story though, it has to be said. Such as when Sister Ann starts tugging on a hair coming out of the centre of her own eyeball (the censors in the UK would not have let that one through back in the 1980s, that’s for sure). It doesn’t really add any clarification to the rest of the story, it has to be said but, hey, it’s still a nice sequence so, I’ll certainly forgive the film for its quirkiness. Art can transcend functionality as far as I’m concerned.

There are also some nice discussions, particularly between Byers and Salmon, about the nature of God and the approach to tackling exorcism, with Byers character challenging the established church line all the way through the film. Is she right to do so? Well, it aint over ‘til the fat lady sings or, in this case, ‘til a certain lady takes a bath in holy water but, I will say I found the ending peculiarly satisfying and, there is certainly room for a sequel or even a franchise here, as far as I’m concerned (not that I think there will be one, mores the pity).

And there’s not much more for me to say about this one so, apologies for the short review. I would love a copy of Nathan Barr’s score on CD but, yeah, that doesn’t look like its going to get released anytime soon. Some in the audience might like to know that this is the last film to feature Ben Cross, who died not long after he’d shot it in 2020... I guess this was another movie delayed by the coronavirus pandemic. Other than that... it’s well acted by all and sundry, has some good effects and holds a certain amount of tension. I liked a lot of the characters too, which didn’t hurt. All in all, I’d say that if exorcism things are your jam... don’t expect wonders but, certainly, Prey For The Devil is one of the more character driven and entertaining of this subgenre of movies so, yeah, I’d certainly recommend it.

The Possession Of Hannah Grace

Saving Grace

The Possession Of Hannah Grace
2018 USA Directed by Diederik Van Rooijen
UK cinema release print.

Well this is an entertaining little horror movie I saw the other night, based solely on the strength of the trailer I saw about a month before.

Now, it has to be said, the promotional trailer for The Possession of Hannah Grace is cut so that it seems to be a lot more subtle and atmospheric than it actually is... at least in terms of a slow burn film, that is. This one is anything but restrained and even during the opening pre-credits sequence we are treated to an ‘exorcism gone wrong’ with all the kinds of post-Freidkin possession shenanigans you’d expect to see in something like this, thrown at you in the first five minutes or so. It’s quite hokey, in all honesty but that’s okay, there are many kinds of horror films and this is just not one based on any sense of deepening mystery, is all.

The story is the tale of Megan Reed, played ably by Shay Mitchell. An ex-cop who is cursed with the cliché of failing her partner by not using immediate, deadly force and who has left the service because she can’t cope with the hesitancy that killed her colleague. And, yeah, if you think this back story is just setting her up for a shot at redemption and recompense towards the end of the movie... bingo. Like I said, not subtle but that’s okay, it’s a fun enough ride.

So anyway, shortly after we join Megan, she starts the first night of her solitary graveyard shift at the Boston hospital and, of course, as you would expect, the body of the victim of the exorcism gone wrong, Hannah Grace (played quite dextrously by Kirby Johnson), is brought in and starts causing all kinds of trouble for poor Megan, as it’s clear the exorcism didn’t quite take. And... yes, if you’re thinking this sounds a touch like The Autopsy Of Jane Doe (which I reviewed here) then you’d be absolutely right. This is a little like that film but with no slow build up or mystery and lots of demonic battles pushed to the fore. I mean, all pretense at mystery on this one is taken away at the end of the first pre-credits sequence anyway, when it’s made clear to the audience that Hannah Grace... or at least the cadaver of her which is inhabited by a demon of some kind... is not exactly dead.

Now, the film tries to have its cake and eat it by showing us Megan working alone in a dark suite of the hospital morgue while, at the same time, having her connect with, or sometimes meet and make, new friends and acquaintances over the evening. The reason why the story does this is very simple... the somewhat less than static corpse of the title character is slowly healing herself and, basically, the more people she kills, the less crippled, burned and wounded she is. So we get a steady stream of potential victims visiting Megan for various reasons over the course of the evening, specifically so they can be stealthily killed by Hannah in some kind of supernatural way. Which kind of works okay and I didn’t mind this way of doing things here... once I’d figured out the director was going for full-on demonic showdowns rather than trying to build a scary atmosphere. It’s a valid way of going about things and it... just about... works here.

There’s also a nice sense of symmetry in the mise en scene to this movie and, by that, what I mean is that this director seems to really love the middle of the screen. I would guess that for over 90% of this movie, the camera favours shots which pitch the main action or focus of the shot dead centre. It’s almost like Van Rooijen and his cinematographer have an obsession with this way of doing things. Sometimes he will just use the vertical slabs made by corridors, doors and windows to pull everything to the middle and often he will be moving his camera around, sometimes hand held, so that whoever the character he is following will still mostly stay at the centre of the frame. Occasionally, he will use the twisted, fast, creepy crawling cadaver of Hannah Grace and deliberately pitch her off centre in order to contrast this style and attempt to surprise the audience but, even some of the jump scares are pitched directly centre of the shot and are done by masking off visibility with fluctuating light and shadow rather than with peripheral details.

Strangely, there’s an obvious set up early in the film and he never seems to yank on that string later... at least not in this cut of the movie. Very early on the filmmakers go out of their way to make us understand that about 90% of the lights in the morgue are sensor operated on movement to save energy and this is further highlighted by constant scenes of Megan having to go into dark areas and wave her arms about so the lights come back on. So, yeah, I was just waiting for this to be used as some kind of set up to some big kind of jump scare but... no, surprisingly the director doesn’t really utilise this here. That being said, there could well have been a scene which did just that in an earlier cut, for all I know. I’m just guessing here though because, why shoot all those instances as a set up unless you were going to take advantage of it later on in the movie? Unless he just wanted an excuse to keep everything darkly lit, I suppose.

At the end of the day, The Possession of Hannah Grace has some nice acting, some likeable characters and also, I should add, a nice soundtrack by composer John Frizzel which, alas, doesn’t seem to have a CD release. The downside on this is it’s fairly predictable and there are no real scary bits in this one. However, as a ‘comfort horror’ film is works quite well and I think most lovers of the genre will quite like this one. Or at least not find much to complain about. So there you go, that’s me done on this one. If horror movies, no matter how hokey, are your thing, then you might want to give this one a go. If not... yeah, you can probably miss this one. I quite liked it and will be happy to watch it again when the Blu Ray goes into the bargain bins, for sure.

Deliver Us From Evil

Performance Evil-uation

Deliver Us From Evil
2014 USA
Directed by Scott Derrickson
UK Cinema release print.

I’m not quite sure what to make of Scott Derrickson as a director. On the one hand he directed Sinister (reviewed here), which is not a film I had a great deal of good things to say about, although I did try and defend certain aspects of it as well as I could, considering some of the negative points I mentioned in that review. However, you’ve also got to remember that this is the same director who gave us, The Exorcism Of Emily Rose, one of the better of the “exorcism” films made in recent years. A very well made piece of horror/courtroom cinema, if you ever get the chance to take a look at it.

I had no preconceptions about Deliver Us From Evil going in. I can’t remember if I’d seen a trailer for it or not, it could be any of a number of horror movie trailers doing the rounds in the last couple of months, but I figured I would go and take a look at it because it didn’t look like it was a remake of anything and so it scored points with me straight away on that count.

The film is based on the true life account of a cop, Ralph Sarchie, who is played by Eric Bana in the movie and it details his encounters with supernatural forces dealing with demonic possession. He is at the start of the movie, of course, cynical of such things himself but when the things he sees and encounters as a cop on the beat become less and less explainable, he “teams up”, so to speak, with a priest, Mendoza, played by Édgar Ramírez, who is able to guide him and help him in a series of connected cases which involve demonic possession and which ultimately lead straight back to Sarchie and his family. Sarchie’s “radar” at finding troubling incidents on the beat is revealed as a possible “gift” of the supernatural... but it also acts like a magnet to demonic entities who are attracted to this talent.

The film starts off pretty strong, with an opening sequence which takes place in Iraq and which is relevant to pretty much all the events that happen later in the movie. I’m happy to say it keeps up the pacing and is an interesting movie throughout. Now how successful it is depends on your definition of what you look for in a good movie as opposed to a good horror movie. Let me explain that a little...

You’ve got two very strong male leads, A list stars, with Eric Bana and Édgar Ramírez and they’re not really actors you would associate with the horror genre. They both do an excellent job in this, as do all the supporting cast and, although there’s a hell of a lot of hand held shaky camera throughout the film, it actually in some ways feels like a 1970s movie and, frankly, that’s a strength. Yes, I know it’s actually set in 2013 but what I mean to say is the acting style and delivery of the lines feels like something made in Hollywood back when great American movies were being made and this is a pretty good compliment to pay to any movie in my book.

However... the flip side of that is that, although the film does maintain a certain amount of tension and suspense throughout the picture, I wouldn’t actually call this a scary movie... so in regards to certain ingredients of this kind of entertainment I would say it downplays one of the elements somewhat. But this is not a bad thing either.... some of the classic horror films of all time, such as Bride Of Frankenstein or Creature From The Black Lagoon are not , in actual fact, scary and so this shouldn’t necessarily be the barometer by which you judge this movie, in all honesty. Part of that, I think, is to do with the way the camera cuts to different points of view in various sequences... the ones which are trying to be scary... when it maybe needed to stick to something resembling point of view in those moments.

However, although it may not be a scary film it is, certainly, a pretty great one and I, like all people, truly appreciate a well made movie. I think this movie is one of the ones I would like to nominate as one of my “comfort horror movies”... that is to say, horror films you can relax with and have on when you want to do some thinking with a little bit of distraction coming from the screen. It is something I would like to watch again on a number of occasions and I’ll certainly be grabbing the blu ray of it when it comes down in the sales.

Of course, I may be a bit harsh in regards to the amount of scares and sustainable tension packed within the film... which felt a little more like a police procedural movie at times (and there’s nothing wrong with that). Different things scare different people and you really can’t go that wrong when you’ve got one of the great modern composers, Christopher Young, turning in one of his trademark horror scores. So the best, sure fire way to find out if this is your kind of horror movie is, of course, to go see it for yourself. I’ve certainly got no doubts about recommending it to anyone because it’s a well made, entertaining piece of cinema which should hold your interest throughout. Whether you happen to find it scary or not is just an extra cherry on an already tasty cake. Miss this one at your peril.

The Last Exorcism Part 2

Nell To Pay

The Last Exorcism Part 2
2013 USA
Directed by Ed Gass-Donnelly
Playing at cinemas now.

Warning: Very light spoilers possessing
the soul of this review as you read...

Well this movie came as a bit of a surprise when I finally saw it.

A number of years ago now there was a “found footage” horror movie called The Blair Witch Project which was made on a shoestring budget and which went on to conquer the box office and scare people silly. While the iron was hot, a sequel was commissioned by the studio but this dispensed with the dodgy 1st person camera eye view that had so impressed people in the first movie (although this film far from pioneered that style of directing, it certainly repopularised it and the aftermath of that is still with us today) and instead was presented as a straight, linear movie narrative. The seeming touch of brilliance, though, was the fact that it was the so-called found footage from the first movie which inspired the characters in the sequel to proceed into similar territory and get themselves into so much trouble.

Unfortunately, for everyone involved, the second Blair Witch movie turned into “just another teen horror movie” which was dull and uninteresting and it seemed that the filmmakers had been so intent on reaching that easy pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that they had forgotten to make sure that the film turned out to be any good.

Cut to a couple of years ago and a similar “documentary style” footage movie called The Last Exorcism that some people didn’t really go for but which I’d really loved opened in cinemas (my review of it can be found here). When somebody other than the original creative team announced that they would be doing a sequel (so what would that be... The Laster Exorcism?) and that they would be dispensing with the first person camera style in this one also, I was getting a strong sense of deja vu that this was going to be going the same way as the Blair Witch sequel... especially as it comes to pass that “found footage” from the first movie turns up as a youtube video in the second film.

However, where The Last Exorcism Part 2 scores over the Blair Witch Project sequel big time is that, this time, the new creative team actually put together a pretty entertaining movie. I know I’m probably going to be in the minority on this one but, I have to say, I really liked this installment.

Ashley Bell returns to this film in the same role which she played so dazzlingly well in the first movie and this one indeed picks up pretty soon after the last film ended in what I can only call a “blaze of Wheatley”. Only this time she’s not doing hardly any of the “twisted body” thing she did so well in the first movie... this film is not like that. It does its own thing.

Her character, Nell, is “discovered” in the pre-credits sequence, which is another little exercise in jump scare horror, and this pretty much sets the tone for the whole movie and her adventures in a girls orphanage in New Orleans is all about becoming a normal girl who is gradually feeling her recent past catching up with her.

Nell is a name which echoes deep for me in the legacy of cinematic horror. It’s the name which Shirley Jackson gave to her heroine (short for Eleanor but written ghostly on a wall as Nell) in her novel The Haunting Of Hill House which became, and still remains, my favourite movie in the genre when Robert Wise made it into a film in the early sixties, The Haunting (so much so that I’ve never been able to contemplate seeing the remake). Nell in this and the previous movie in The Last Exorcism franchise has fair hair and an innocent to the point of blindingly naive demeanour, just like Jackson’s original heroine, played so well in the sixties movie by Julie Harris and maybe that’s why I have such an affinity with the Nell character in this franchise. More likely, however, it’s probably more because Ashley Bell is such a fantastic actor who really knows how to use her body language to put her character across when the character’s voice leaves her words often unspoken. She’s a really interesting actress who tends to hold your attention whenever she’s on screen.

There’s also another actor back from the previous movie but... I really shouldn’t tell you who. It might spoil the sequences that character is in a little too much for you.

To be honest, the movie proceeds throughout most of its running length to be a series of cheap scares piled on top of yet another sequence of cheap clichéd scares which I can sometimes be critical of as a technique in modern horror... except this movie executes these fright moments so well. It had me jumping at everything... dogs barking and hurling themselves at fences, radios doing spooky volume tricks, birds flying into windows... it’s all there but the director knows how to time it so, even though in most cases you know exactly when and how the scare will be coming, it still manages to give your heart a little rush when it comes. At least, it did that for me.

Nell’s gradual maturation from an innocent little girl through to a point when she is anything but an innocent little girl is both touching and satisfying to watch. There’s a scene in Sam Raimi’s excellent M.R. James retread Drag Me To Hell (reviewed here) where an attempt is made to trap a demon in a goat and then kill the goat before it gets loose again and a similar kind of sequence (in a slightly differently presented way) is played out towards the end of this movie but, where Raimi tends to play his scenes for laughs, this one is played for keeps and the shift in strategy by the exorcist and his secret society in here... their kind of end game last resort... is something which makes you think, oh yeah, this was the devils plan all along, to force this battle right here and now. I don’t want to spoil the final outcome for you but I really loved the last sequence of the movie (as i had the movie before) and, without giving too much away, I would have loved it if somehow a time machine could have been invented to let Bernard Herrmann score the last shot as a backwards xylophone hit over a jump cut. If you know the film I’m referring to here well... when it comes up in this one you’ll know it when you see it.

There is prominent use of CGI in this little end sequence but I just loved it and although there will probably be a lot of detractors to this movie, because it doesn’t do exactly what the first movie did and for a heap of all kinds of other reasons, I know a skillfully put together motion picture when I see one and the performances and standard, but astonishingly effective, horror score straying into the realms of sound design by composer Michael Wandmacher mark this movie out as a much worthy successor to the original film than, say, Damien: Omen 2 was to The Omen (and there’s a good reason I refer to that film series in particular here).

All I can say is, if you liked the first movie and were as astonished by Ashley Bell as I was, here you get to see a less physical but equally enchanting side to her characterisation of Nell and I think you might want to go along and leave your expectations at the door. I know I did and I’m very pleased at that.

Two Wrongs Don't Make The Rite

The Rite 2011 USA

Directed by

Mikael Håfström

Playing at UK cinemas now.

There are not that many really scary or decent horror movies made these days, to be honest... even less covering the topic of demonic possession so popularised by Friekdin’s The Exorcist back in the seventies. However, having said that, there have been in recent years, one great movie about a demon from Hell and two really good exorcism movies. These are Drag Me To Hell, The Exorcism of Emily Rose (which wins out big time with its interesting tack of intermingling the “possession” with a post-exorcism, court room drama movie) and The Last Exorcism respectively.

I had high hopes for The Rite because the trailer is pretty cool (way cooler than the movie eventually turns out to be) and it features two really good elements to the storyline which tease you into thinking this movie might have some real edge... one being a student priest who doesn’t believe in the terms and conditions of his religion anymore, which to be fair is nothing new and on its own would not carry much water, but this is combined with the added extra of having the chief”guru exorcist” played by a much loved Welsh actor (Anthony Hopkins) being himself demonically possessed and putting the pressure on for said young unbelieving priest to “get his spirit on” and perform an exorcism on his former mentor. This all comes up in the excellent trailer for the movie so I’m not really spoiling anything here folks, although, it has to be said here and now... there’s something wrong with The Rite.

A couple of things as it happens... but I’ll get to that soon enough. First let me tell you what The Rite does well before I pick up on what I see as its obvious weaknesses.

Well for one thing it’s beautifully paced and really well shot and edited. It feels closer to it’s template movie, The Exorcist, than most of it’s demonically possessed peers because its pace is, to say the least, very leisurely and very much reminds you of an American film shot in the very early seventies... what we might perhaps today call a very European sensibility to the film regarding the pacing and the absolute beauty of some of the framing and lighting presented in the early parts of the work as it jumps from scene to scene.

Also, the performances are, mostly, spot on pitch perfect and there’s a little raft of great character actors that, aside from the legendary Rutger Haur, will have you playing the “I know him, now what’s his name” game. This popped me out of the narrative at two points... one where I was all “Oh... that’s the Dream-master geezah from the last series of Doctor Who” and another where I came on all “Oh, it’s the geezah from Munich!”. These actors deliver in the same way only great, unsung character actors can and, together with the low key but high quality performances by the rest of the cast (in general, I’ll get to Mr. Hopkins in a minute), it’s a top notch acting job all around.

Ok. So great cinematography, pacing, editing, a fairly standard score (competent but not outstanding, although it may be more striking as a stand alone experience) and some great acting do not, as it turns out in the case of The Rite, a good movie make!

I think the real problem here is that I don’t think the director knew he was making a horror movie. I bet the studio did and I bet that’s what they signed on for... but this film really doesn’t deliver too much in the way of scares and where the deliberate “made you jump” moments are portioned out in the middle sections of the film, they seem kind of fake and added on. The cat at the window scare, for instance, is shot as a little series of close ups away from the master shots and I suspect there was some heavy, serious studio tinkering (possibly reshoots?) to put more scare into this movie at certain points... they just seem tacked on.

I’m guessing here (so I’m quite possibly wrong), but I think the studio were after a rip-snorting scare fest for kids and Håfström himself was making a mature and extended study of demonic possession as seen in a Catholic faith setting... and at some point what he was making came to a head on a collision course with what the studio thought he was making and things may have changed... goal posts may have been moved halfway through the shoot is my guess. Either one of these movies... what the director wanted to make or possibly the “balls-to-the-wall” horror fest the studio wanted would probably have worked really well with this kind of plot on their own terms... unfortunately, when the two styles collide the film kinda hits a lot of false notes which lead it to a quickly resolved (in view of the pacing of the rest of the movie) climactic sequence which does nothing to help the credibility of the tale as it unfolds. The main lead is good and Hopkins, who has been brilliant all the way through the film, suddenly gets possessed by Baal (a demon) and goes all over-the-top hammy and starts munching on the scenery like there’s no retakes allowed. This, then, is the other big problem of the movie... Hopkins histrionics, no doubt the best possible choice he could have made given the scripting at this point, kind of destroy the credibility of everything that’s gone before and leave the film bereft of anything like a satisfying resolution (or what could have been an even more satisfying sense of non-closure).

At the end of the day, though, I think my verdict on this one would have to be that The Rite is not really going to satisfy many horror fans and I would say that the only people who are really going to get anything out of this are going to be watching the film on it’s purely aesthetic levels... not to watch a story unfold. If you’re one of those people (as am I on occasion) then you might well like the movie... if you want something which is at least the sum of it parts, however, you might want to steer clear of this one.

Whatever you decide... Do the Rite thing or don’t... but go in knowing that you’ll possibly be less than satisfied with the experience.