Introducing Hollywood’s big new theatrical release for Halloween… the 598th exorcism movie… complete with contortionist demons! It’s so original. So so original. The power of who compels me? You don’t say. Sigh.

Prey for the Devil suggests the number of possession cases rose so dramatically in 2018, the Vatican opened a College of Exorcism in Boston, Massachusetts. In this school, the male priests learn about the Rite of Exorcism while the nuns act as nurses. But our hero nun wants that to change… she wants to bust that exorcism glass ceiling. Meanwhile we just get a lot of bog standard exorcisms…

I partly can’t say you’ve seen this movie before because how many exorcism school movies are there? But, really, you’ve seen this movie before. It does nothing new with the ideas… and imagine they could have presented an outside world coming to grips with a plague of demon possessions. I mean, it’s a big enough problem there’s a whole university to deal with it…

But no… we just get two or three exorcism scenes you’ve seen before… only now with a woman! That allegedly makes the difference because she sees the possessed for the person, not for the demon. Woah. Sigh.

Anyhow, the movie is full of dark corners and the same REALLY LOUD NOISE to announce every single jump scare. Someone should tell the REALLY LOUD NOISE Foley department that a good jump scare should be possible without their help.

I broke down and gave the movie a little credit for not having a totally boring final act. Yeah, it didn’t do much different and yeah you know how its going to go down, but at least it was better than the preceding hour. I was maybe marginally invested… but I wasn’t even marginally frightened.

Yeah, this is just like everything else ever made only with a tiny little twist in its gender studies classes at Exorcism U. Otherwise, maybe a little decent film-making and pacing at the end. This is not what we deserve for Halloween at the theater, that’s for sure.

Score: 62