Main cast: Liam Cunningham (Six), Pollyanna McIntosh (Constable Rachel Heggie), Bryan Larkin (Constable Jack Warnock), Hanna Stanbridge (Constable Jennifer Mundie), Douglas Russell (Sergeant Jim MacReady), Niall Greig Fulton (Dr Duncan Hume), Jonathan Watson (Ralph Beswick), and Brian Vernel (Caesar Sargison)
Director: Brian O’Malley
In the opening scene of Let Us Prey, the man emerges out of nowhere, dramatically, over the cliff looking over a rocky sea, as crows take to the air as a backdrop of his appearance.
Great, so I suppose this fellow is some kind of avenging angel or a demon out to capture some souls. Am I right? Well… let me just say that the show telegraphs the “twist” of the movie in this scene. Is it even a twist, given the circumstance?
Since the movie gives away the game pretty early, I may as well give it away here too: the man is the devil himself, and unlike the usual red-skinned, horn dude sitting on a throne in Hell, this fellow walks the earth arranging for the demise of sinners that manage to get away unpunished by law.
He shows up in this sleepy, small Scottish town, where he lets himself by run down by a speeding Caesar Sargison. He then disappears. The whole thing is witnessed by police constable Rachel Heggie. Even when there’s no body, she decides to bring him in anyway.
In the police station is her boss, Jim MacReady. Somewhere out there are fellow police constables Jack Warnock and Jennifer Mundie, that are having an affair. All of them do not respect and constantly underestimate Heggie. Locked-up is Ralph Beswick, who is there for beating up his wife badly.
Eventually, Warnock and Mundie locate and bring in the mysterious man, who is then examined by the town doctor, Duncan Hume. The man triggers some kind of flashback in Hume, who then tries to kill the man before he is restrained and thrown into a cell himself.
All this is engineered in a way by the man, who is thrown in cell six and hence is credited as Six (his name is never mentioned in this movie). You see, all of these people are sinners, some of them of the worst kind, and he’s going to make them either to confess or to pay for their sins with their lives.
Well, aside from Heggie: early on, she’s revealed to be a victim of sexual abuse that eventually managed to escape her captor, so she’s not a bad person. She’s just here because the devil is in love with her. No, really.
This movie takes over 40 minutes to get the fun started, and until then, I am subjected to this movie having a clear case of identity crisis. Every character talks like they are in a comic book, with every line dripping in corny, try-hard edgy sarcasm in that always annoying “nobody talks like this, these people are just reading out lines from a script” way. ‘
While this may be fun in over the top wacky action caper, this movie isn’t set up to be that kind of thing. Aside from the dialogues, there is nothing here that screams larger than life action movie. Sure, the constant heavy-handed scenes of crows all over the place and glaring at the camera now and then can be a bit too much, but for the most part, the tension and the set-up are more appropriate for a supernatural thriller.
Hence, there is always a sense of whiplash to be had whenever the movie plays out like a horror film, only to be completely deflated every time a character opens their mouth and says something that instead makes me cringe. Imagine a horror film with characters that talk like they are auditioning for an edgy superhero movie—that’s Let Us Prey.
The whole thing then takes a turn for a cartoon kind of absurd when one of the characters goes nuts and imagine themselves to be Rambo coming to blow up the whole place. Aside from the dialogues, nothing in the movie suggests even a little bit that that would be the climax of the movie so yikes indeed.
Some of the kills are pretty good, but those are few and far in between. Liam Cunningham and Pollyanna McIntosh are pretty good in their roles, but they don’t really do anything here other than mostly looking on as the others take themselves out of the picture. Hence, there are more minuses than pluses in this thing, sadly.
For the most part, this is one movie that would have benefited tremendously from having the script tinkered a bit first to set a more consistent tone and feel for the whole movie. As it is, it’s just too all over the place to make an impact on me.
