jayala-78334

Just finished watching a screener as I'm interviewing some the cast and thought this was a solid, well-directed and performed movie. When I watch horror films at home, the scares rarely get me but this one still managed to. Possession/exorcism films are nothing new, they've been around for decades but Prey For The Devil had some great surprises and twists to keep the story moving. Jacqueline Byers gives an incredibly vulnerable performance, with Posy Taylor also giving a great performance, sweet at times and disturbing at others.

Christian Navarro was a very sympathetic leading man and it was cool to see him in a role like and moving on from teen roles. Colin Salmon and Virginia Madsen both gave solid performances as well. Wish they had a bit more to do in this one besides giving exposition or being opposing voices of reason, but happy to see them in another horror project.

Overall I thought it was pretty scary, well executed and enjoyable.

I have only seen clips, bit and pieces of the Hellraiser franchise and thought this film was... just fine. Mildly entertaining, well-performed and shot really well, I was intrigued enough to finish the film and overall, enjoyed it. I don't understand why anyone, whether critics or fans, cannot help but weight films against other installments or other unrelated films. That's not critique, it's comparison, and it's completely irrelevant.

It's not meant to be an improvement upon the first, but as described time and again in its marketing, a new adaptation of the source material. From all I've seen this one is slightly more loyal to the novel than the film made by Barker himself. I always found some of the kills of the original films rather cheesy and campy. That's what they were going for, so great! But the storytelling, effects and direction were all great.

I overall enjoyed the film, the performances from some of the young cast, especially Elsie Fisher, and Garcia's direction and cinematography was brooding. Wasn't a huge fan of borrowing the legacy character aspect of the movie that has been done recently in 2018's Halloween and 2022's Scream. Sally's appearance had a lot of promise but added very little to the plot.

Not a masterpiece, but we certainly weren't promised one.