Sunday, June 1, 2014

The Prophecy (1995)

            Hello my gore-geous fiends and welcome to Satanic Sunday!  On this most holy days of the week, I feel it is my duty (and right horrorshow) for me to present to you reviews of movies and such about Satan or demonic entities/possession.  I know you all didn’t ask for this, but that’s just the kind of ghoul I am.  First up for today’s reviews, we have Gregory Widen’s 1995 film The Prophecy.  I picked this flick because I generally always find movies with Christopher Walken in them to be particularly entertaining, and I wasn’t let down with his performance here as Gabriel, the Angel of Death. 
            The premise of the flick is that there is a second war in heaven that is not foretold in the current editions of the Bible, where some of the angels are angry because God gave humans souls.  The angels felt that God loved humans more because of this, Gabriel at the top of the ranks of these.  He comes to earth to find an evil soul to use against God in this war, only Samuel gets to the soul before both Gabriel AND Lucifer (Viggo Mortensen) and gives it to a child to hide.  Gabriel wrecks havoc until he finds the soul he seeks, picking up souls that haven’t left this world yet (but are about to) on the way to do his bidding before they die.
 
            This movie isn’t particularly gory and there aren’t a lot of death scenes in it at all, though it does have a few burning bodies, and some torture, so it’s not completely devoid of visuals.  This is more classic good-versus-evil than slasher-style horror, but that is an appropriate theme for a tale that is focused on the belief that God and the Devil are real entities.  There are also some beautiful Native American ritual scenes, which seem fairly authentic and punctuate the film with other cultural and theological points of view.  The score isn’t particularly memorable, though there were a few decent pieces sprinkled in there somewhere.  That being said, the cinematography was solid throughout – no messing about with shaky cameras or out-of-focus shots. 

            I personally really enjoyed watching this movie, though I can’t really call it ‘horror’ per se…perhaps more a theological thriller?  Anywho, it’s at least worth a run through.  A low body count of four deaths, with a rarity here…there were also technically four killers in this movie as well.  I actually don’t think I’ve yet reviewed a film with the same number of deaths as killers, so that’s pretty wicked.  Boob Count? Zero, there wasn’t even any kissing in this movie.  Cheap Thrills?  None.  It took itself a bit more seriously than that.  Real Chills? One or two, mostly from Walken’s performance.  Raven’s Scream Meter Says:  4 out of 5 Screams, but this is definitely less ‘horror’ and more ‘dark heavenly war’ style.  I hope you enjoyed the review!  Feel free to comment below, and of corpse thank you for reading! Xx ~ Raven

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