“I love that because in most movies, you have to do the half an hour of doubt, and everybody is sitting there going, ’No, we know we’re in an exorcism movie. It’s probably a demon.’” laughs Stamm. Spoilers: it’s a demon. We’re chatting about what brought him back to the genre, and he explains it comes with expectations which are a blessing and a curse. “It is a very narrow genre on one hand because you owe set pieces to the audience. What we have to do is find a fresh angle.” Prey for the Devil’s angle comes via its protagonist. The film tells the story of Sister Ann (Jacqueline Byers), a young nun who has had dealings with demons in the past. Housed at a secret exorcism school, Ann is only allowed to carry out duties as a nurse—women aren’t allowed to perform exorcisms. But when a young girl (Posy Taylor) starts to display a pattern of disturbing behavior, Ann realizes it’s her calling to help. “You get so many movies with female protagonists, and it’s such a buzzword, the ‘strong female protagonist,’” says Stamm. “How do we earn the label of the strong female protagonist in a way that it’s not interchangeable? It couldn’t be a male because the story is how she has to go up against the demon, but first, she has to fight the patriarchy, and she has to fight the church for the right to be allowed to fight a demon.” “In theory, if you stop the actors and said, ‘Tell me who is at the steering wheel right now,’ they should be able to tell you, ‘My right hand is the demon, but my left hand is the victim.’” Invisible antagonists, as Stamm explains, are a lot of fun because, unlike, say, serial killers, you can’t just lop their heads off. The film is very much a character piece and an emotional journey, with Ann’s approach being to care for and understand the host rather than just screaming Biblical verses at the demon (“let us just keep the Latin to an absolute minimum,” Stamm laughs). While the bones of the story are based on real things (“We are now in an age where there are more demonic possessions reported than ever before in history,” the director reminds us), Stamm’s decision to remove ambiguity allows other interpretations. “It allows you to create this metaphor for so much stuff,” he says. “It’s terrorism. It’s disease. It’s all this stuff that corrupts a body, which I think is so terrifying for us because losing control is a terrifying thought.”
Jacqueline Byers is Sister Ann
How would you describe Sister Ann? She is a nurse in her own way. I think that she is a healer, and I think that her healing comes from her own trauma. She’s extremely determined to make sure other people don’t experience the same trauma that she went through. What made you want to jump into something like this? You say you were slightly afraid of the material. Can you delve into that a little bit more? The concept of guilt and shame and it attacking someone’s psyche. I think the mind is kind of like the depths of the ocean – we know nothing about it. Controlling our own thoughts can seem impossible at times. Spending a month and a half having to go to places where my shame and guilt lived for me was daunting. I think it’s a little bit like running a marathon where you don’t really enjoy doing it all the time, but at the end, there’s a good reward. It’s a very physical performance as well as an emotional one. That was some of the most fun I had. We shot that right at the end. After the first three weeks, it was pretty emotionally taxing, and then the last week, it was nice to just let go of all of the tension. I have a figure skating background, I competed heavily when I was very young, so it was also nice just to be able to use that to my advantage! Prey for the Devil opens in theaters on Oct. 28.
