Let Us Prey

Thank God for all these vehicles giving middle-aged white actors a career resurgence, because Christ knows they were so marginalised before. Oops, probably shouldn’t take the Lord’s name in vain around Let Us Prey, a pseudo-religious supernatural thriller. Pollyanna McIntosh stars as a by-the-book rookie policewoman in a grim town, where the cops are as laden with sin as the criminals. When murders of crows and black feathers herald the arrival of a mysterious stranger (Liam Cunningham), the base urges and dark desires of everyone around him are revealed, over the course of one night in the small police station.
Cinematographer Piers McGrail heightens the creep factor, keeping the shots claustrophobic and allowing shadows to hint at the encroaching danger. It’s most effective in the first act, where both McIntosh and the audience are left in a constant state of discomfort and suspicion by her bullying co-workers. This is particularly true of Sergeant (Douglas Russell), who spouts Biblical quotes while creepily (and predictably) allowing his gaze to linger on young male prisoners. The sound is also effectively nasty, as a pulsing techno soundtrack recalls the foreboding suspense of Drive, while the scratch of fingernails, the heat of too-close breath and the buzz of fluorescent lights powerfully evoke a sense of dread.
This subtlety is abandoned in the second act, where the weirdly underused Cunningham‘s influence becomes stronger, and a burning, murderous apocalypse descends. O’Malley delights in sex and gore, from scalped heads and slit throats to crushed skulls and gouged eyeballs – but under all the carnage, his psychology and mythology remain underdeveloped, so his hellfires burn out very quickly.