{"id":125996,"date":"2022-10-24T06:00:14","date_gmt":"2022-10-24T05:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/?p=125996"},"modified":"2022-10-28T09:22:54","modified_gmt":"2022-10-28T08:22:54","slug":"prey-for-the-devil-exclusive-talking-exorcism-movies-the-conjuring-and-jump-scares-with-director-daniel-stamm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/cinema\/prey-for-the-devil-exclusive-talking-exorcism-movies-the-conjuring-and-jump-scares-with-director-daniel-stamm\/","title":{"rendered":"Prey For The Devil Exclusive: Talking exorcism movies, The Conjuring and jump scares with director Daniel Stamm"},"content":{"rendered":"

Upcoming exorcism movie Prey For The Devil <\/strong><\/em>follows Sister Ann (Jacqueline Byers), who believes she is answering a calling to be the first female exorcist and seeks out a place at an exorcism school reopened by the Catholic Church.<\/p>\n

However, until now these schools have only trained priests in the Rite of Exorcism \u2013 but a professor (Colin Salmon) recognises Sister Ann\u2019s gifts and agrees to train her. Thrust onto the spiritual frontline with fellow student Father Dante (Christian Navarro), Sister Ann finds herself in a battle for the soul of a young girl, Natalie (Posy Taylor) who Sister Ann believes is possessed by the same demon that tormented her own mother years ago…<\/p>\n

Prey For The Devil’s <\/strong><\/em>director Daniel Stamm is no stranger to exorcism movies, having previously directed The Last Exorcism <\/strong><\/em>and we sat down to speak with him about what makes this movie stand out amongst the exorcism crowd…<\/p>\n

How did you first get involved with Prey For The Devil<\/em>?<\/h3>\n

I got the script and really loved it because of the whole angle of the female exorcist, of the school – all that was just fascinating. It’s so hard to do something new in horror, and in exorcism, there’s such a narrow field in what you can do. After The Last Exorcism<\/strong><\/em>, I’m reading every exorcism script ever and I never got one where I was like ‘this is worth making, the world should have this movie available’.<\/p>\n

This was the first one in 10 years or something where it’s like ‘oh, there’s something in here that goes beyond horror – there is drama, and a character that I really care for’. So I immediately responded to the script and I prepared this huge presentation for Lionsgate. I felt really good about it and everybody was like ‘oh, I think you’ve got the job’. Then another director got it and I was so crushed. I didn’t hear about it for half a year and suddenly I got a call: ‘Can you be in Romania on Friday? Our director quit, can you make this movie?!’<\/p>\n

Suddenly I’m making the movie and I hadn’t even read the script in half a year! And because of the time crunch, there wasn’t much time to work on the script. So then we prepped the script as was, as the other director had developed it with the writer, and then Covid hit. Suddenly we went on hiatus for half a year and suddenly there was all the time in the world to develop the script.<\/p>\n

What elements of the script did you change?<\/h3>\n

In the original script there was a certain reverence for the church, which you never read. Normally, it’s so easy to poopoo the church and to have a cynical take on the church. The script had that but it also conveyed the church and the more modern lives. That they have an atheist psychiatrist on staff, and they are very much working with science and technology. I thought that was really interesting. The original draft was so full of research, it was fascinating. It was like this documentary, which was great [but] I wanted to make sure that the character stuff and the set pieces kept up with that. There’s always stuff that reads great and then you shoot it and you go, ‘oh my god, it’s so much exposition’. So I wanted to make sure that that balance was there.<\/p>\n

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The script for Prey For The Devil changed a little during covid to focus on developing the movie’s characters (Photo Credit – Vlad Cioplea)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Why do you think audiences enjoy exorcism movies so much?<\/h3>\n

For believers, I think it works on a visceral level that you don’t get anywhere else. All the groundwork is already done for you and you just have to play on these fears. But even for non-believers, to meet the idea that the enemy is within, that there is a victim, you can’t just destroy the body… With Michael Myers, or Jason or something you hack their heads off and the threat is over. Here, you can’t hack anything off. You really have to get in there. You have to be a doctor as much as a warrior. That combination to me is really interesting.<\/p>\n

What makes Prey For The Devil<\/em> stand out against other exorcism movies?<\/h3>\n

Usually, in exorcism movies, there are priests that are screaming a lot of Latin at a demon and then stuff flies around and then the demon has left. Our mantra was basically ‘no latin chanting’. Keep it to an absolute minimum because yes, it sounds cool for a minute, but then it’s so boring, because there is no room for character. With someone that recites someone else’s text – God’s words in this case – there’s no room for character. We said ‘okay, we have a female protagonist, why don’t we for once try to really rise up to the occasion and make that matter?’ Because you have so many movies that are talking about the feminist approach but in the end, it’s a female character that does exactly the same stuff that a male character would have done.<\/p>\n

So we basically said okay, the male approach is personified in the Arch Angel Michael, and the big image that everybody knows is him stabbing the dragon with a lance or sword or whatever, which obviously is the more male approach. We just go into battle. But really secretly, it’s all about us because we see ourselves as warriors and equals to the demon and should be able to assault the demon.<\/p>\n

So I was really excited when we came up with the idea of, what if she takes the therapeutical approach? Why don’t we listen for once rather than scream at the demon? Why don’t we go in there and empower the victim to fight the demon from within?<\/p>\n

That to me was a more intuitive and more female approach. That she would, of course, bump up against the church that has been doing it differently for millennia, and she has to fight for the right to fight demons.<\/p>\n

She has a more personal connection to all of this and yet, she is kept out because she is a woman, she can’t fight demons. So that to me was new and fresh.<\/p>\n