Some things I liked some I did not.

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

After reading a lot of the reviews for this film I had such high hopes for a scary film with an interesting plot... i'm Afraid all the people who left reviews must have been watching a different film! The only positive I can give is that the Scottish mans acting was great and he was very believable... the plot however was lame and went nowhere... there was not a single frightening moment apart from when one of the guys jumps up from behind a pew and makes you jump... the end left more questions than there were answers and overall it was just pretty terrible. Very disappointed.

Disclaimer for those who have not seen yet: 1. Two animals get hurt. One is loud but you can see the details of neither event. 2. This is a found footage film. Motion sickness prone people beware. 3. There are very subtle sounds. I highly recommend listening with sound up. 4. Sometimes the accents can throw us dumb Americans off. Subtitles might be helpful. 5. Ending is pretty graphic. ----------------------------------------------------------There are flaws with this movie. But they are overshadowed by the uniqueness, the surprise factor, the atmosphere, and the characters.Flaws: 1. There are very obvious stock sounds used in certain places (ceramic Jesus breaking, the dog). Big no-no for me.2. Deacon had one line delivery that was kind of weak (I can't recall which one it is at the moment, but I remember cringing at it).3. Deacon reading the journal and not understanding what the last part meant. It was SO obvious, come on dude. Gray should have at least had some idea.4. Gray follows Deacon at the end. DUDE. Dude. No, why. Totally not in his character, unbelievably stupid.Positives: 1. I love the characters. Even Mark. They seem very genuine (besides the mentioned flaws). I want to protect Deacon and Gray under my momma wings.2. The build-up is flawless. It starts off as a run-of-the-mill found footage/church/demony movie.. then they sprinkle some science/disbelief in there (more realistic than some other movies). Then they start trickling in a tiny bit of creep factor. They throw in some personal drama to break the main tension, but add more of another variety. Then it just EXPLODES and cleans up with a hella unique ending. You can infer the ending from clues throughout the movie, but even still.. it catches you off guard.3. The sound design. Besides the stock sounds. The wall scratching noise, the whispers on the wind, absolutely gorgeous and atmospheric.4. The shots themselves. I LOVE found footage horror movies. But do you know how many of them I like? About 3. Out of.. hundreds? It's depressing. One of the biggest mistakes they make is either making the movie seem too refined, a high production film, or that they make it completely incomprehensible, and yank the camera away before any interest can be built. Final Prayer is very easy to watch (I cannot speak for those with motion sickness, but for me it was great), and the camera shows important points without lingering too long. They seem to follow where the characters are looking in a natural way. The landscape shots and small scenes where the characters are walking to the church are also wonderful and build the suspense.5. The realism. Again, besides the few flaws I mentioned above. I just.. ugh. I can see me acting like Deacon (if I were a man.. and of religion), Gray (pretty much as I am now), or Mark (if I was a stuffy man of religion). The cameras were explained very early on in the movie and their reasoning is very believable. As official members of the church investigating a highly controversial topic, one that may involve injuries of various persons. Other found footage are like "yeah I'm keeping this 50lb camera because I want to document even if it kills me". Which is OKAY but I'm pretty sure most people would drop that real quick if a murderous creature turned its sights on them. 6. The side stories. I love Gray's personal phone calls and suspended disbelief. I love Deacon's traumatic history. I love Father Crellik's dilemma. I love that one of the more horrible things in this movie is a completely unrelated event caused by random teens. Seriously though, those kids can get fluffed. And I love the story behind/in the journal.I would have given this a 7 or 8 out of 10 but.. It's really so unique as a whole. Despite the flaws, I gave it a few extra points for being a movie I can keep going back to if I'm lookin for a spook.

So-called "found footage" movie making annoys me. It is disorientating, head ache inducing and, in my experience has absolutely NOTHING in its favour. It is completely repellent. The idiotic, too close framing and jittering do absolutely nothing to make a movie more convincing or "feel real". Everything about this ill-considered fad is awful and absolutely nothing is good. After only a couple of minutes, I was tempted to walk out and, having sat through this boring garbage to the bitter, pointless end, I really wished I had. Putting the jittery camera work completely to one side, the "story" was so weak and unconvincing as to be barely existent. I didn't give a flying one for any of the characters and the end was a total flop. There were no saving graces. I have seen a huge number of horror films and this was one of the most disappointing, mainly because hopes were raised too high by overly enthusiastic, self-indulgent scribes who are far too easily impressed by pretentious, vacuous, utterly pointless nonsense.

--major, MMMAJOR spoiler alert-- . . i seriously do not understand how movies of this sort achieve 5+ rating, i'm not venting right now, i wish i could ask some of the people that rated it as such, 'cause i truly fail to understand this. well done, once again you made me waste time and money on this horrendous, childish nonsense.the characters are flat and meaningless, deacon and michael especially who are just both awful, unlikeable and poorly acted cardboard cutouts of people, why would you care about anything that happens to these two is beyond me. gray likewise gives the impression he just popped into existence: no story, bland meaningless character with a single, recurring 1-sided phone call that links his character to anything happening beyond the perimeter of these "borderlands", and to whom it's given the sad task to inject an attempt at pitiful humour into the story, and what story? what is it that happens in this movie, exactly? a single, exceedingly (no. not enough. Exceedingly. nope. EXCEEEEEDINGLY, better... i so hope never to see this man in movies again. EVER. AGAIN.) poorly acted and equally 2-dimensional character who's thankfully been on screen all of 3 minutes total commits suicide, and a single, actual gem of brilliance gives me hope (yet dashed) for future development when gray goes out for a cigarette break and amazingly fails to see his own headstone. mhhh... sheep on fire? OK... that was a moment... but why? who were those guys? what motivated them? why do they wear hoods? why do they harass the protagonists? why does anything happen here AT ALL? well, viewers, that's why it's a horror/"MYS-TE-RY" movie, get it?no.once again, Once a-freakking-gain, another movie that, having just had a scene with a sliver of genius that makes you hope for something better to come, then devolves into a senseless, pointless underground chase for a character who just refuses to stop or at least reply, and who's always just out of reach (see: "as above, so below", the twin to this reeking pile of dog doo, and a dozen of the other 2p movies i've watched in the last 6 months) with nobody ever questioning why would they do that, or where are we going here, 'cause of course it's a friggin labirynth... leading to what i believe is the scene for which the entire movie was greenlit, the "final minute".i would bet my "final dollar" they made the entire mess of a movie on the back of that last minute, they even changed the title, right? from "borderlands" (which borderlands, what are they on about for the love of Bob) to "final prayer"? the directing writer obviously couldn't find a sane a-leads-to-b-leads-to-something-plausible reason for why "our" characters all of a sudden find themselves inside Satan's rectum (...AH YES... (note 1)), so have them blindly follow someone and just find themselves there, OK so we manouvered ourselves so that there's no-one left to "lampshade" the stupidity of it for the viewers, let's just throw it out there, it'll work, they're horror watchers, so morons after all.well, yes, if you managed to give a 5+ to this movie, yes, sorry, but yes, you are.Neil, London, UK. (note 1) and now that you've read that you're going to rent the movie aren't you? aren't you? i'm warning you, don't, it's not going to be even half as much fun as this post was.