REALLY BAD

I usually don't say this about many movies, but this movie SUX.

It was like being dropped into the middle of a mythical soap opera and, although the characters were speaking English (except for a few lines where there is speaking 'in tongues'), I might just as well have been watching a movie in a foreign language (i.e., foreign to me) without subtitles for as much sense as this movie made -- except for the few hackneyed standard lines that I knew were coming before the actors said the lines.

Start with the bit about 'watchers of watchers'. Wow -- not. Never fully developed, at least in any kind of coherent manner. Maybe the screenwriters just thought it sounded cool or something.

The gathering at the beach -- can anyone say rip off of 'City of Angels'?

Then there was the 'fallen angel' (I think that is who that was) that, in her few scenes, looked like Dil from 'The Crying Game' after the bad haircut, except with white powder all over his/her face. Not that, that in and of itself, is any kind of valid criticism...it just was distracting and I was waiting for her to start dancing and singing 'The Crying Game' at any minute or for Stephen Rea to burst into the scene ;)

And, why in movies such as these, does Lucifer always end up looking the same (think 'The Prophecy')?

And, if you could keep up with all the switching of names of whom the main characters were supposed to be, you did better than I did.

C. Thomas Howell must have really practiced his 'I am so distressed' look for this movie, like he was trying to pass a kidney stone or something, because that was the 'face' he seemed to wear in every scene (at least it doesn't appear that he has fallen under the sway of Botox). Maybe he was trying to transmit to the audience how 'distressed' he was to be in such a stinker of a movie.

I kept waiting for something -- SOMETHING -- to happen, given the themes seemingly promised in the previews -- but really NOTHING happens (except for some very poorly done killing scenes --e.g., blood on the wall that doesn't match where a victim is shot -- and some other bloody gore). It keeps switching from each of its separate stories that are supposed to be interrelated, but instead they don't 'connect' and all the characters pretty much do is 'talk' about what is 'supposed' to happen. It was like trying to put a jigsaw puzzle together, and the more you put the pieces in, the more they don't fit (even with the textual hints about what was supposed to be happening that would appear on the screen every now and again -- a movie that has to do that doesn't say much for the quality of it).

I really dig good religious fiction movies, but, darn, there just aren't many really good ones out there. 'The Prophecy' had a few cool scenes of angels at war, but that was about it. 'Knowing' tried the alien/angel mix, but it failed miserably (IMHO). With all the really good special effects technology these days, you would think we could get at least one really good, eye-popping movie about Armageddon, angels warring -- that kind of thing.


I am still waiting.


Anyway, avoid this movie like the plague. It's really, really bad.






"I can't stand a naked light bulb, any more than..a rude remark or a vulgar action" Blanche DuBois