Prey for the Devil is about an eternal battle between good and evil and the Catholic priests who fight it. Following Sister Ann (Jacqueline Byers), Prey for the Devil sees her character attend exorcism classes so she is better equipped to fight against a demon that has been haunting her since childhood. When a young girl arrives at the school seemingly possessed, though, things take a turn for the worst. Sister Ann will have to look into her past to save herself and the young girl from the demons of the present.

Prey for the Devil is directed by Daniel Stamm, who has helmed everything from episodes of the Scream television show to the acclaimed found footage horror The Last Exorcism. In addition to Byers, Prey for the Devil also stars Christian Navarro, Colin Salmon, and Nicholas Ralph.

Related: 10 Best Possession Movies

Screen Rant caught up with Stamm prior to the premiere of Prey for the Devil to talk about the film, including the real-life terrors behind its story, a scary on-set stunt incident that could've easily gone bad, and much more.

Daniel Stamm on Prey for the Devil

prey for the devil jacqueline byers

Screen Rant: Before I get into the film, what kind of horror scares you the most? Because for me, it's definitely possessions and demonic horror so this one kind of hit.

Daniel Stamm: I think there is that certain nightmarish quality that sometimes movies have. It's a split second of something where you go like, "Oh, that'll visit me tonight in my dreams." My first horror movie - I don't know what my parents were thinking - was Psycho when I was eight. I mean, it's so smart if I rewatch it now because Hitchcock created all these moments that are straight out of a nightmare. Brilliant. And that is stuff that you own.

You can plan for that as much as you want to, but it's something that just either happens and materializes or doesn't. There are good horror movies where that never materializes. But when it does, it's something that the audience doesn't have any defenses against, it'll slip right in there. And they can't do anything about it. And that's my favorite horror effectively.

Since you're so used to working in horror and you've worked in so many sub-genres, how do you work to connect with your actors and guide them through what can be a really stressful process?

Daniel Stamm: It's interesting you're asking that. I just saw Jackie Byers [Sister Ann] in Toronto yesterday [and] we did interviews together and we got the question, "What was the most fun scene to shoot?" And we both looked at each other and kind of in talking about it - it's basically like if you ask an Olympian athlete how much fun it was to run those 500 meters. It's not fun. It is so exhausting. It is so terrifying. You practice for all your life, you have no idea why you're doing it. But somehow you're there. And now you're doing it.

That's basically what that is. In terms of the actors, the dramatic underpinnings of the film are so important to me, because I think the big trap would be to say the scares are the main aspect of a horror movie and everything else is secondary. I am always kind of testing the script by saying, if I pulled out all the supernatural stuff, all the genre pieces, all horror elements, would this still be an interesting story to follow? Would this character still be someone I care for? And then scares really don't work if you don't care for the character. You can cut someone's head off, but if no one cares, then it's not scary. There's this theory, slightly different, but if you cut someone's arm off with an axe in a movie, you almost get no reaction from the audience. But if you do a paper cut that people can relate to, you get a reaction in the audience.

And it's the same here. We have to have the feeling we know that character. And we need to be given a reason why we feel protective of that character, and why we want that character to be successful. In our film, for example, there is the scene that we now start with, which is Sister Ann talking to a psychiatrist about her backstory. That scene was originally on the last page, and it just felt like it's such a moment where she is so vulnerable, that you would have to have a heart of stone to not immediately feel protective of her. So that was worth so much that we restructured basically the entire movie to start on that because hopefully, from then on, you are supporting her and along for the journey.

This is kind of like a family film. Not in the traditional sense, but it's about families. Would you say that's what pulled you in and made you want to direct this movie?

Daniel Stamm: Among other things, but horror, obviously all the time is about the demons, literally or not literally, of the past raising their heads again. And when you have a backdrop like this one where it's like a struggle between good and evil that has been raging for millennia, then to make that accessible, it's almost the paper cut again. How do we make the battle coming in from the past accessible? It's family. You're not the first generation who goes up against this. And guess what, you're not the last.

That's what is kind of important to us; that sister Ann was paying the price for her mother's possession. So that was definitely something and just to have that personal involvement because the difference between Sister Ann and the priests is not just that she's a female, but it's that she has a personal backstory with the demon. Her whole life has been affected by the touch of this demon, whereas all the other priests, basically get in there as a job. They're like a doctor or a cop or something that goes in there, does the battle wins or loses, and moves on. There is no winning or losing for Sister Ann and the stakes are completely different. So that's obviously a powerful motivator and engine for story.

Ann's mother appears in Prey For The Devil

It's funny that you mentioned demons of the past. I was just reading this Variety piece, and they ranked The Last Exorcism as one of like the best-found footage horror films ever. You've done so much in horror, what do you take from each project, and how do you apply that to a new project?

Daniel Stamm: I'm always going back to the character thing we just talked about. Every project I do, that's just compounded more because scares themselves are speaking to our reptile brain. There are only so many ways to really viscerally scare your audience, and you just package them differently, but the mechanism is the same.

I sat down before I made this movie, and thought, "Let's brush up on my horror techniques." I sat down with The Conjuring because it's kind of this "best-of-horror-movie-history," right? And James Wan is a master. So I thought, "Okay, let me learn." I took a piece of paper and a pen, and I was like, "Okay, I'm now going to take notes." And when I was done with the movie, I had taken two notes. The first note said, sound, a blast, jumpscares through sound because there were bus doors opening, and he goes strong, and it's a jumpscare. And the other thing was, we have stuff happen that the audience is not witnessing, like when Annabelle the doll is sitting out in the hallway, and then we go inside with a camera, and we come back outside, she has now written something. That's scary because I wasn't privy to that. But that was basically the entire arsenal of horror tools.

And he makes a stunning hour-and-a-half movie out of it, where every minute is riveting, so it's really not about finding new ways to scare someone, but then having the same tools applied in a story to characters that you care about, so that it feels fresh in that world.

I love this world, this idea of the battle between good and evil. What kind of research went into depicting these exorcisms and these classes and this process of learning how to become an exorcist?

Daniel Stamm: Everything that we're saying in the script is actually true and based on research, because our screenwriter, Robert Zappia, is a practicing Catholic. When I read the script, I was like, "Why does this feel different?" Because in most other movies, like Last Exorcism, there wasn't a single believer involved in the making of the movie. We went through at some point, and we're like, "Oh, no one believes in God or demons or whatever, let alone the devil."

Here, it was different. The source of it all, was one that didn't just dismiss the church as stuck in the Middle Ages, which is so easy, they're still doing the same stuff. But he has a friend who is a deacon who put him in touch with a real exorcist, which we're going to have on the DVD and the special features, an interview. Fascinating. And he told him everything he was allowed to tell him, which Robert said was so scary that whenever the exorcist reached the point where he was like, "And that's all I can tell you, there's stuff I can't tell you," Robert was like, what could be more terrifying than what you just told me? And when I read the first draft, it was full of workshops and seminars talking about all this and it was fascinating. But of course, we had to thin it out a little bit for the movie to have time for the movie to happen.

But everything that is said in the movie is a fact. We are now in the high time of exorcism and possession, more than at any time in history. The Middle Ages is not the golden age of possession, it's us now and the Vatican opened up exorcism schools worldwide in 2018. That's all true. None of this is made up. You don't have to make up any of that stuff. I've always said that I myself am not a believer, but the audience members that are believers, and that are of the Catholic faith, faith, they have been primed. The first act of this movie has been playing for 20 years for decades in their lives before they see this movie, which you have in no other genre. So it's a really kind of fruitful genre that way.

Earlier you said it's not necessarily fun to film, but do you ever find yourself getting scared on set, or do you have a particular scene that was challenging or just sticks out in your mind as an interesting day on set?

Daniel Stamm: Oh, of those we have a lot. The scary thing real quick - absolutely not. And I think anyone who tells you they got scared on set is lying because creating a scene is layer after layer after layer after layer. Nothing is less scary and more work-intensive than pulling that off. There is really nothing scary because you've planned every single moment in something.

But you have moments. For example, when Christian's character Father Dante is being thrown against the wall backward. He wanted to do that stunt himself, but we hadn't practiced with him. We had practiced it with a stuntman who was twice as heavy as him. So when we then tied him to the same steel cable and pulled him, a Bulgarian stuntman on the weightlifter on the other side pulpit, he was being smashed into the wall, which is now in the movie. Which could have ended really, really badly - that could have broken his back easily. Our whole movie would have been a catastrophe. So you have scary moments like that, but they're very non-supernatural.

About Prey For The Devil

Screenshot of Prey For The Devil

The Roman Catholic Church combats a global rise in demonic possessions by reopening schools to train priests to perform exorcisms. Although nuns are forbidden to perform this ritual, a professor recognizes Sister Ann's gifts and agrees to train her. Thrust onto the spiritual frontline, she soon finds herself in a battle for the soul of a young girl who's possessed by the same demon that tormented her own mother years earlier.

Next: Best Horror Movies Of 2022

Prey For The Devil is now playing in theaters.