Audience Member
Very bad. Not scary, not well acted, poorly made, cheap, contrived, funny when it shouldn't have been, forgettable, and boring.
Rated 1.5/5 Stars •
Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars
02/27/23
Full Review
Audience Member
The one memorable prayer from the Christian horror flick <i>Pray</i> came from our protagonist Madison as she climbed in her car while a shadowed man chases her. Madison's car won't start, at first, so she seeks divine intervention: "Jesus, please start my car!"
<i>Pray</i> is an incredibly exciting thing for me. As I mentioned, it's a Christian film but also a horror film - my two favorite genres. Cross Shadow Productions, if you go to their website, explain that their intent is to create Christian films that will not automatically make non-Christians turn away in disgust. That's why they make these horror movies. They've already got a sequel for <i>Pray</i> out, and another one coming out soon. Plus, they've got a <i>Poltergeist</i>-like film called <i>Paranormal</i> in production. All in all, I am excited to see every movie this company produces. And why?
<i>Pray</i> has everything you want in a bad Christian or horror film. Terrible camera-work, bad editing, ridiculous dialogue, a lame story, and acting that gives new meaning to the word "amateur". In short, it's a masterpiece.
The movie is about a girl named Madison, a popular sort of girl at her upper-class Christian high school. She and her friends begin the movie just coming back from a Chrisitan rock concert and are talking about it in their motel room. The scene is quite obviously unscripted, so the kids are just saying random nonsense over one another. One guy has a guitar and if you listen closely, you can hear him telling some girls that the lead singer from the band they had seen gave him his guitar. Okay.
Due to some creepy goings-on, including a couple of false-alarm jump-out scares (the only kind this movie will provide, being rated PG), Madison and her roommate decide to leave the motel early and head back home. Madison's friend, by the way, is perhaps the worst actress in the entire production. I could easily imagine how her lines and actions were written in the script and see what she was doing incorrectly. It's acting like that which this movie is full of, and which makes Shannen Fields (<i>Facing the Giants</i>) look like a master thespian.
The next day is mostly about Madison hanging out at school, getting ready for the evening when she will go to the mall to buy a dress for the home-coming dance. She spends a lot of time hanging out with her boyfriend, who goes into a wooden monologue about how Madison is the greatest girl he knows because she shares her faith with everybody and isn't afraid of being direct and blahblahblahblah. He says all this with food in his mouth. Madison's response? "Did you even pray before you began eating?" Ah, no wonder he loves you, Maddy.
There are occasional cuts to news reports and such, wherein the B-story regarding a hooded man (known in the credits as "The Shape") is kidnapping women. During one such scene, a reporter reading from cue cards provides exposition and then calls the police chief over from the crime scene to answer some questions. He stumbles over his lines and otherwise reads them in a stilted manner, eventually telling the reporter that, "Uh, probably at about 1:00 PM tomorrow, there will be a press conference to tell you any new information we have." This sort of sloppy writing and painful delivery is exactly the sort of thing that makes this movie so deliriously entertaining.
Madison goes to the mall that evening, as promised, and somehow stays there until long after the mall has closed. When she is leaving, she sees a hooded man walking behind her. I don't think she had really seen any of the news reports regarding the kidnappings, but because he was a hooded man, her gut reaction was to run screaming away from him. Of course. He walks calmly after her, because that's what horror movie baddies do, except when she got out of range of his view, in which case he would jog to catch up. Madison runs to her car, fumbles for her keys, screaming and wailing the entire time, and then gets in to find that the car will not start.
Here we are again, and she turns to the maker of the world and all of its living things with her plea: "Jesus, please start my car!" It seems like such a demeaning thing to ask of Jesus, doesn't it? Jesus, please clean up this room. Jesus, please make the bed. Jesus, please mow the lawn. But putting aside his pride, Jesus apparently came down out of Heaven and gave her a jump because as soon as she pled with the gods for her car to start, lo and behold it did. Hooray!
I will not give away the ending of the movie, except to say that it is absolutely incredible and will leave your jaw hanging open in disbelief. Here's a hint: the resolution of this film relies on God's awesome power to do more than simply start a car. You will have to see it to believe it.
Ah, yes yes yes. <i>Pray</i> is simultaneously the best and worst movie I have seen in some time. I am not sure that I did a good enough job explaining just how bad a movie it was, nor how endlessly entertaining the unskilled participants made the end product. What a fantastic failure this film is. I loved it.
Rated 0.5/5 Stars •
Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars
01/15/23
Full Review
Read all reviews
>
