The devil and his minions want everyone to put on masks at the same time so that a signal can be sent out to steal your soul or kill you. Black robed satanists have a ceremony where they blaspheme and plan naughty things.
It's the story of Halloween III (The one without Michael Myers) and the story of
Revelation, starring Jeff Fahey, Carol Alt and Nick Mancuso.
This unintentional comedy is from the producers of
Left Behind: the Movie and written by Peter and Paul LaLonde, and featuring ministry from Jack and Rexalla Van Impe and James Hagee.
This movie is just a mess. Fahey tries to bring something to a role that is thinly written, everyone else except Tony Nappo as hacker Willie Spino, is either chewing scenery or outcasts from a community theater. There is some really bad acting in this movie, and the director and editors seem like they are afraid to cut off the end of anyone's lines to improve the flow, almost every scene has the feel of something painfully read off of cue cards with no regard of whether it makes sense or even matches what goes on the screen (such as when one of the characters brings in a tape from the security camera from the bad guys base and it is an audio tape).
The premise here is that this is three months after the Tribulation and in that time Franco Macalousso, known to the world as the Messiah, who is really the devil in disguise, has had time to establish a one world government, conveniently enough called One Nation Earth (O.N.E.), which already has worked out a full scale army/police force, and has a giant office building headquarters, complete with old fashioned jail and giant furnace for Christian cooking.
Fahey is Thorold Stone, whose family were taken in the rapture and now he is left behind and doing the mournfully watching old home movies bit. He shares the tendency of all those left behind in these movies of for some irrational reason hating the church and only having vague irrational reasons for not wanting to go.
Thorold (What a name) and his partner are sent to kill a group of Haters (Christians) who meet in an abandoned warehouse. Because, you know, homes are out of the question. It's funny in this type of movie how the satanists are apparently able to meet in private without being discovered for years, wearing those dark robes and chanting and killing of innocents and whatnot, not to mention the giant flaming crosses, but when put in the same situation, the Christians can't seem to keep it down and be able to meet somewhere air-conditioned.
But, to continue, the Haters in question have supposedly blown up a bus full of schoolchildren. This brings up an interesting problem with this film. I thought in the Rapture of the Left Behind type series that children were supposed to be taken because they are innocents, yet here was a busload of kids to be blown up, and the minister in the film has a young daughter. Am I to believe that these kids were somehow bad?
Come to find out the Haters didn't really do it, it was a crew of O.N.E. guys led buy a guy who can walk through walls, but yet sees fit to ruin a good suit by letting Thorold shoot him repeatedly. The guys with mister intangible also broke the cardinal rule of wetwork, DON'T WEAR YOUR DAMN NAME BADGES WHEN YOU'RE OUT BLOWING UP SCHOOLCHILDREN AND FRAMING HATERS.
Which brings up the question, if the guy can walk through walls, why doesn't he just go and kill the Haters himself? He has two other guys with guns, why blow up the kids, other than to be evil? Oh, I forgot to mention that they want the Haters, not just because they're Christian, but because one of them has a disc that contains information that could reveal the Messiah's plans, and the intangible guy shoots Thorold's partner.
There is then some of that mild detective thriller stuff, which leads Thorold, now wanted for his partners murder, to Willie the Hacker in a wheelchair (how original) who just happens to be working on the Messiah's Day of Wonders virtual reality project. They hook up with a group of Haters who just happen to be led by Willies sister (who just happens to speak with a British accent, and not have the same last name as him, maybe they were in-laws, I really don't remember), and they come up with the same plan that worked against the aliens in Independence Day.
The VR hokum is set up to give people what they want as an illusion, but if they don't renounce Jesus in the program, then they are strapped down to a guillotine topped with the eye in the pyramid and killed. This brings up the question of why wouldn't the people just take off the damn headset when they are confronted with a guillotine? Why doesn't Fahey in the movie?
Things I learned from this movie:
1. Shooting out a computers monitor stops whatever program is running on it.
2. Don't trust cripples or blind folks, because they will turn on you in the final act, just so they can walk or see.
3. When you need something witty for a character to say, just use something you saw on a bumper sticker! They make great one liners.
4. Virtual Reality and computers are evil and the tools of the devil.
5. Did I mention don't trust cripples or blind folks, because this is definitely a subtext for the film.
In the end, this is a definite pass.
-4 babes
