In most respects, Prey for the Devil is a fairly standard possession movie: a demon possesses a vulnerable person (in this case, a child); some scary stuff happens; God's warriors have to figure out how to exorcise the demon. Looking only at the rough outline, it's practically interchangeable with much better movies like The Exorcist and Insidious. The unique twist that Prey tries to take is a feminist angle--in the Catholic Church, only male priests are allowed to perform or even learn about exorcisms, but Sister Ann (Jacqueline Byers) isn't about to let the patriarchy get her down. She believes she is called to contribute to this war against Hell's minions, and she's willing to bend the rules to do it. However, Prey's attempt to be progressive is ultimately hypocritical, as it places the responsibility for demon possession on the possessed themselves.

In most exorcism movies, the victim becomes possessed through no fault of their own. Sometimes it's the result of moving into a haunted house, as in Insidious. Sometimes it's a consequence of coming into contact with a cursed object, as in Stigmata and Constantine. And sometimes the victim was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, as in The Exorcist and The Exorcism of Emily Rose. But Prey for the Devil blames the victim for their own possession.

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Initially, Sister Ann theorizes that people make themselves vulnerable to possession because they believe that they are unworthy of God's love. This is not so different from blaming abuse victims for staying with their abusers because they have poor self-esteem, or because the abusers have successfully convinced them that no one else will love them. Ann believes that if she can simply convince someone that God does indeed still love them, they will be able to expel the demon on their own.

Punishing Women for Exerting Control

prey for the devil

Image via Lionsgate

However, Ann's theory gets called into question after the failed attempt to exorcise Father Dante's (Christian Navarro) sister, Emilia. The alternative explanation for her possession, though, is even more problematic. Dante reveals that Emilia was raped, became pregnant, and chose to have an abortion. Either Sister Ann is correct, and Emilia now believes that because of her choice, she is no longer worthy of God's love, making her vulnerable to possession; or the abortion itself made her vulnerable to possession because she committed a mortal sin and attracted the attention of Hell, inviting in the demon. Either way, the movie draws a direct line between Emilia's choice to exercise control over her own body and her possession, and an indirect line between being raped and becoming possessed.

Even worse, after an attempt to exorcise Emilia, Ann and Dante believe they have succeeded, and they walk away. But they learn the next day that the demon had merely retreated--it hadn't actually been expelled--and Emilia later killed herself. The film has meted out the ultimate punishment for the abortion, and Sister Ann leaves the exorcism school in disgrace and retreats back to her convent.

We then get some crucial backstory about our main character. She always believed her abusive mother was actually possessed, not schizophrenic as she had been diagnosed, and we now learn that her mother killed herself in order to stop hurting her daughter. The demon had possessed her in order to get to Ann, who her mother believed had been chosen by God for a divine purpose. After this traumatic childhood Annie was placed in foster care, but she began drinking and acting out, likely because of the extreme emotional baggage she was carrying. At 15, she became pregnant, and she sheepishly admits to Dante that she was too strung out to know who the father was. Although the movie is somewhat sympathetic to her trauma and abuse, it frames her pregnancy as a stupid adolescent mistake, rather than using the correct term for having sex with someone who is too intoxicated (and in most states, too young) to consent: sexual assault.

prey for the devil Jacqueline Byers

Image via Lionsgate

Now, the daughter that she surrendered for adoption, Natalie, is possessed by the same demon that possessed Ann's mother, and it still wants Ann. Again, the movie punishes both Ann and Natalie for Ann's choices and, as it did with Emilia, ties vulnerability to demon possession to abuse and assault.

Horror movies have been punishing women for their sexuality for decades, so much so that it's become an old trope that if a character has sex in the movie, they're certain to die, and the "final girl" is always somehow purer than the others. The most famous example is probably Friday the 13th, but the trope is so well known that 2011's The Cabin in the Woods famously parodied it, blaming it on the whims of mysterious elder gods.

'Prey for the Devil' Takes It a Step Further

A little girl bloodied and bruised carrying a rosary in 'Prey for the Devil.'

It doesn't just punish women for having sex; it punishes them for attempting to exert control over their own bodies and, tacitly, for their own sexual assaults. The film seems as though it's trying to be progressive-- early on, it talks about how women were persecuted by priests hundreds of years ago and acknowledges that their methods were barbaric. Yet in the end, Ann saves her daughter by drowning herself in the holy water pool as the priests used to do to those accused as witches, retroactively justifying the practice. Father Dante is able to revive her, but the implication that the priests were right to do what they did--and that women's bodies really do need to be controlled by others--remains.

Intentionally or not, horror stories often end up being allegories for all kinds of things--racism, mental illness, loss, even societal fears like foreign invasion and pandemics. When done well, like the powerful illustrations of living with grief in The Babadook and Cabinet of Curiosities' "The Murmuring," they can help us to better understand our own traumas. But when done poorly, they can send ugly, regressive messages, particularly about vulnerable groups of people. Prey for the Devil demonizes women while hiding behind a supposedly empowered female protagonist, and this movie and this message don't belong in the 21st century.