3 out of 5

Directed by: Elliot Goldner

Whether or not the slow burn of Final Prayer is worth its pay off to a viewer – as with a lot of horror films, reviews suggest this is dependent on if the pay off triggers any of your own fears – this 90-minute British found footage entry is proof that there’s value in investing in story and characters: if we stretch back to the grandpappy of the FF boom with Blair Witch, great marketing and some good spooks in that film aside, would it have been as effective if we didn’t believe the characters, and if there wasn’t a good sense of lore build up?

Final Prayer (know as The Borderlands in the UK) fondly reminded the 10+ years after-the-fact viewer of the premise of the TV show Evil: we’re focused on Vatican-dispatched investigators into supposed miracles, with a tech person, Gray (Robin Hill), the cynic and would-be-believer boiled into one character, Brother Deacon (Gordon Kennedy), and the let’s-just-call-this-a-fraud-and-move-on corporate oversight of Big Church represented by Father Mark Amidon (Aidan McArdle). Shift the show’s investigations into real or fake to reviews of footage of things going bump in the night in a remote, recently-reopened Devon-based church; and shift Evil’s politicking around religion to more direct poking at what defines faith, and you’ve pretty much arrived at a similar template, albeit leaning much more heavily into trying to spook the viewer, but just to suggest: writer / director Elliot Goldner is not above inserting some bleak humor into the mix, underlining the reality of these characters.

Who sell what is, primarily, 80 minutes of talking. But I credit the film with its atmosphere: we’re subject to cameras futzing out as a way of obscuring things, but by relying on a patient rollout of building weirdness, a great church set that’s been well lit and framed to elicit maximum what’s-in-the-shadows creeps, and especially effective sound design that lets baby’s cries and creaks and voices burble, unsettlingly, in the background, Goldner (and primarily Kennedy and Hill, on screen most of the time) turn those 80 minutes into something very compelling, as the initial “miracle” of things moving on their own in the church is debated, and doubted, and disproven, and then… maybe not?

The balance of believers and poo-pooers amongst the trio is done well; the “why are we filming?” is greatly and easily managed: the Church needs us to document this stuff, so make sure to always be wearing these little earpiece cameras that handily give us POV visuals, okay? A trio of editors (Will Gilbey, Jacob Proctor, and Mark Towns) and Goldner then made sure to chop up the first person shots such that it can mimic over-the-shoulder dialogue back and forths, and so that we’re pretty well set in the geography of the areas. It’s well done.

Horror / found footage fans will have a good grasp on the general vibe, though. While the aforementioned pay off definitely scores points for its uniqueness, and though I’d stand by the build up as well done on its own terms as a film – like you could’ve stood this up as a mystery or sorts, and stripped it of some of the horror elements and it would’ve been solid – the basic premise itself is nothing new, nor is milking a remote locale for its local quirk as a way of signaling Shady Business to a viewer. On the plus or minus side of that familiarity is also one’s acceptance of the general tone: Goldner establishes early on that he’s not going to lean into jump scares, nor would there be any benefit to the story by revealing its details before the conclusion, so you have to know you’re in this for the experience of it, and not to be on the edge of your seat the whole while. That, understandably, sets a lot of burden on the pay off to be legit, hence pretty heavily split opinions from the horror crowd.