MOVIE REVIEW: PREY FOR THE DEVIL

 

The Roman Catholic Church combats a global rise in demonic possessions by reopening schools to train priests to perform exorcisms. Although nuns are forbidden to perform this ritual, a professor recognizes Sister Ann's gifts and agrees to train her. Thrust onto the spiritual frontline, she soon finds herself in a battle for the soul of a young girl who's possessed by the same demon that tormented her own mother years earlier.

Director: Daniel Stamm

Cast:  Jacqueline Byers, Colin Salmon, Christian Navarro, Lisa Palfrey, Nicholas Ralph, Virginia Madsen, Ben Cross

Release Date: October 28, 2022

Genre: Horror, Thriller

Rated PG-13 for violent and disturbing content, terror, thematic elements and brief language.

Runtime: 1h 33m

Review:

Daniel Stamm made his name as a director with the creepy and surprisingly effective The Last Exorcism which brought energy to the tired exorcism trope.  Prey for the Devil marks his return to the subgenre with a much more conventional and predictable film propped up by committed performances from its stars.  Stamm moves at a rapid pace which helps since the script is a collection of half baked ideas and overused tropes.  There is a kernel of an interesting idea that touches on gender politics and trauma, but the script doesn't explore them in any meaningful way making them pointless.  We're told fairly early on that Jacqueline Byers' Sister Ann is special, but the script doesn't bother to provide any tangible reason why she's special outside of being the focus of the demon since she was a child.  The character also leaves a wake of bodies by the time the film ends which doesn't seem to bother anyone in school.  Thankfully, Byers makes the entire thing watchable with a performance that's far better than the film and script.  Byers turn is believably focused with a palpable sense of the character's underlying trauma being ever present.  She's able to keep an air of authenticity throughout even as things become progressively more absurd. Colin Salmon and Christian Navarro, who looks distractingly like Jay Hernandez, do what they can with underwritten roles.  Virginia Madsen on the other hand is criminally underused in what amounts to a throwaway character.  Prey for the Devil is the kind of film that's perfectly comfortable using clichéd tropes to deliver a few effective set pieces but doesn't offer anything fresh or surprising.  

C

MOVIE REVIEW: RESIDENT EVIL: RETRIBUTION

IN THEATERS ON DVD

RESIDENT EVIL: RETRIBUTION



Awakening in a top-secret Umbrella facility as the T-virus threatens to wipe out the last remnants of humanity, Alice (Milla Jovovich) ventures on a quest to uncover the truth about her mysterious past and seek out the source of the apocalyptic plague. The deeper Alice ventures into the complex, the more she begins to learn about her origins. Later, after escaping to the outside world, she embarks on an epic adventure that takes her to the farthest corners of the globe as she fights the forces of darkness alongside allies both old and new. Sienna Guillory, Michelle Rodriguez, and Kevin Durand co-star. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Director: Paul W.S. Anderson

Cast: Milla Jovovich, Sienna Guillory, Colin Salmon, Michelle Rodriguez, Kevin Durand.

Release Date: Sep 14, 2012

Rated R for sequences of Strong Violence

Runtime: 1 hr. 35 min.

Genres: Action/Adventure

Review:

There’s a scene near the end of Resident Evil: Retribution, the 5th installment in the series, where Sienna Guillory’s brainwashed Jill is pummeling Milla Jovovich’s Alice. The film as a whole kind of feels like during its mostly plot less and scant runtime. We don’t get a sniff of the plot for this film until about 15 minutes into the film. In those 15 minutes we get one of the better action sequences (an action sequence picking up from the end of the last film shown in reverse), a recap of the previous 4 films done fairly easily in 5 minutes which is a testament to depth of storytelling and a Dawn of the Dead remake like sequence. In essence it’s just a series of vignettes that don’t seem to have any sort of connection. Once the plot and sexy cat suit & dress budget comes into play we get fairly quick exposition that provides the thinnest of a plot to work with, after that it’s a series of action set up after another. I will admit that some of the action sequences are shot with an almost teenage glee, particularly those involving Jovovich which shouldn’t be a surprise since her husband once again directs her. Anderson suffers from the same “I love my wife soo much that I want all hero shots of her” syndrome that Len Wiseman contracted in the Underworld series. This can lead to some laughably bad sequences which look cool for a bit but are ultimately over stay their welcome and come off as silly. The returning cast members are pretty much wasted as their characters aren’t expanded much if at all. The new cast members deliver some lines with an impressive lack of passion or effort. Probably because they all know Anderson doesn’t care about them and just wanted to get to another scene with Jovovich in a cat suit doing wire work fight moves.

D