Ten Statements About....THE PROPHECY: UPRISING (2004)

"Yes, Watson--I mean Alison--making this sequel was
elementary."

"God created the Earth in seven days.  This is the eighth."

1) So we go from Vigo Mortensen’s wonderfully quirky and creepy Lucifer in a key supporting role to....Cosplay Bernard Cumberbatch in what amounts to a starring role.

Not to evoke a cliche, but O, How The Mighty Have Fallen.

2) This is so obviously a stand alone horror film retrofitted to become a Prophecy sequel, and no amount of references to ‘monkeys’ and an AIM Chat with ‘Joseph_1995‘(Really, movie?  REALY?) will convince me otherwise.

3) I’m one of the few men of my generation who doesn’t get Kari Wuhrer and actually doesn’t find her attractive at all.  And her Alison doesn’t quite work.  She’s required to be this broken woman, and the most Wuhrer manages is to appear half asleep.  She’s barely a type, let alone a character.

4) The reason the revelation concerning John Light’s Reigert doesn’t work is simple--writer/director Joel Soisson tips his hand waaaay too early, relying on our assuming things based on the original trilogy to hide his real identity.  Plus, you know, he’s the only guy who wears all black, so there’s that.

This pretty much is all Kari Wuhrer does throughout the
whole film....

5) While I give the film credit for actually setting their Rumanian shot film in Rumania, there’s no reason for it to be set in Rumania....especially given that one of your main characters is American, and the other two are British (what, Lucifer doesn’t know how to speak Rumanian?).

6) Okay, I get that there could be body swapping demons in this universe because the mythology never said they didn’t exist.  But it’s obviously a cost cutting measure (you know, like shooting in Rumania) to avoid any sort of special effects....

7) You know, Soisson was involved in the original trilogy.  So he has to be aware of how, in his effort to force his film into Prophecy continuity, he contradicts some of the mythology of those films.  Justifying how the demon Belial kills people by ripping out their hearts because ‘the heart is the seat of the soul’ only muddles what was established in the original trilogy.  And deciding suddenly that angels don’t have bodies and have to grab ‘skin suits’ is insanely silly.

Yep...pretty much how I felt watching this crap....

8) So why exactly did you hire Doug ‘Pinhead’ Bradley and shove him in a nothing role just so you can have him have a short conversation with Cosplay Benedict Cumberbatch?  It’s not like the conversation is, you know, interesting or anything.

9)  Especially given that the first film concerned ‘the original Bible,’ you know what would be an interesting MacGuffin for these last two films?  Anything but another crazy supernatural Bible.

10) I think the biggest problem with this film is that it seems to toss away the themes of faith and religion in favor of what amounts to a haunted house story and the way the tragedy contained within the house affects the children.  All the Prophecy gewgaws draped over the film can’t hide how gratuitous and inconsequential they are.

Overall...an awful, badly written and directed film that tries to hide its lack of ideas and characterization behind the name of a much more intriguing film.  Pretty much the bottom of the barrel.

Ten Statements About....THE PROPHECY III: THE ASCENT (1999)

Yep, Chris....you're born to be wild, alright...

“Last night, I dreamed the end of one history and the beginning of another. The darkness was met by the coming of a great warrior. I dreamed of you. You look smaller in person."

1) As cheap as The Prophecy II  looks in relationship to The Prophecy, this film looks cheaper still--in fact, it looks exactly like a microbudgeted direct-to-video sequel with almost no money for special effects or continuity (or, judging from the ‘What Does God Cares’ sign, to repaint a banner).

2) The fundamental flaw in this film is simply this: we don’t have any real point of view character to identify with.  Not only are the two leads only sketched in in the vaguest way (Steve Hynter’s Joseph gets more characterization than either David Buzzotta’s Danyael or Karyn Ann Buffer’s Magdelena), they don’t have nearly enough screen time for us to give a damn about these ciphers.

3) Boy, is Vincent Spano’s Zophael a boring ass villain.  At no point is he threatening or scary, and he simply doesn’t have the gravitas to convey the contempt for the ‘monkeys’ that Christopher Walken’s Gabriel had in the first two films.  He is never convincing as a threat, and the moment where he tries to swerve Magdalena does not work because he never comes off as sincere.  And the big bad he works for, Scott Clevedon’s Pyriel, is such a wuss Spano doesn’t even get the rub of being the lackey of someone cool.

"What do you mean I'm a boring bad guy?  Look at the size
of my rod!!!:

4) You know who does manage to actually fashion a character?  Brad Dourif.  Dourif’s unnamed character (he’s referred to simply as ‘Zealot’ in the credits) is little more than an extended cameo, but his one sorta monologue brings an incredible amount of nuance and energy that this film sorely needs.  Pity he’s given his pass outta here when less than ten minutes are up.

5) You know that this franchise is being forced to sustain itself beyond its sell-by date when they make the villain the hero...and with very little provocation.  Walken’s Gabriel is seen as Danyael’s Guardian Angel just because, and becomes redeemed in the end just because.  Admittedly, he has some of the better lines (and sells those lines with a skill Spano wishes he had), but his purpose in this film seems weirdly counterintuitive to how Gabriel has been portrayed up until this point.

6) I will give this film credit, though--for roughly ten minutes in the third act, director Patrick Lussier breathes a little life into this lifeless film.  It’s not surprising that most of this ten minutes involves tying in this mess with the first film and ends abruptly with the appearance of Pyriel.

7) I truly detest scripts that alternate between the worst cliches (“I’m not afraid of you.” “You should.”) and clumsy attempts at glib wit (“Genocide.  It happens now and again.”).  And this script by Joel Soisson and Carl Dupre seems to revel in its alternating between the two.

"Look at me!  I'm standing on top of a pile of bodies
while cosplaying Christ!  I must be bad ass!  Right?  Right?"

8) There’s a lot of choreographed fighting that I can’t help but think it’s just a punchy punchy run run....which draws more attention to how lightweight the plot of this film is.

9)  I can’t emphasize enough how dumb Pyriel is.  The big reveal of what he is is spoiled by an earlier scene of Joseph doing research, he’s given all this apocrypha without much explanation...and when he does appear, all he does is engage in a quippy conversation with Danyael and seemingly jumps onto the spear our ‘hero’ liberated from Zophael.  The guy does not justify being the ultimate horror that a trilogy of movies was built around.  Having Scott Clevendon portray him doesn’t help; when the thoroughly generic hero comes off as more vibrant than you, you’ve got a problem.

10) If you ask me, Karyn Ann Buffer was not cast for any acting skills--she doesn’t need any, as Magdelena is barely a stereotype or a cliche--but because quite frankly she has a spectacular ass that looks great in the jeans.

Overall...while there are glimmers of life in this cheapjack sequel, it’s overall a very aggravating slog even at less than ninety minutes.  At least it tries to wrap up the story neatly....

What do you mean I got two more sequels to get through?

Ten Statements About....AMERICAN PSYCHO 2: ALL-AMERICAN GIRL (2002)

Oh, Mila, Mila...couldn't you have found another DTV
sequel to star in?

“Okay, think about it.  I’m killing the few to save the many, sort of like Robin Hood."

1) One of the biggest problems with this movie that has many problems is how it simply cannot decide what it wants to be.  It seems like it wants to be as satirical and darkly humorous as the original, but it doesn’t have, nor want, the level of subtlety Mary Harron’s original possesses...and yet there are moments where you think director Morgan J. Freeman, or the script by Alex Sanger and Karen Craig (which totally missed the point of the original), believe they’re filming a genuine horror film.  It’s simply a mess....

2) ...and while we’re on the subject of Sanger and Craig’s script, the damn thing can’t even be consistent.  It goes through pains in the first act and change of the story to establish that this is all Mila Kunis’ Rachel’s point of view (even the scene that looks like it couldn’t be is later established as being seen through her eyes)...and yet they gleefully abandon this the moment they realize they have to firmly establish Geraint Wynn Davies’ ineffectual Dr. Daniels as a credible adversary as opposed to William Shatner’s Professor Starkman.  This is a script that doesn’t have the respect for its own world that it needs to have.

3) And speaking of William Shatner--my God, is he good as Starkman!  Shatner is the one actor who seems to be taking this mess seriously, and his performance is the most subtle I’ve seen him in years.  He’s definitely a high point in this film.

4) I really wish I could say the same for Mila Kunis, who is admittedly super-cute...but I think she takes the opposite tack of Shatner, overplaying it to the extreme.  There are a large number of moment when I swore Kunis was imitating Sarah Michelle Gellar at her Buffy-est worst, although I admit I could not tell if she was doing this for some sort of metatextual comic effect. And her monologues have none of the nuance and chill of Bale’s in the original, and are so broad they can’t even be interpreted as parody.

o

It's Mila Kunis driving a car containing a dead William
Shatner.  Your argument is no longer valid.  I guess.

5) There are two ‘twists’ in this braindead little film that are simply not set up in the least, one involving Starkman and one involving Rachel.  These things seem to show up solely because the writers need a little extra stuff to stretch out the running time.  It creates a definite sense of ‘making it up as you go along’ to the film.

6) ....but then, this is a film that’s so sloppy in its execution that it has Rachel murder people in broad daylight and in public places and nothing is made of it until the very end.  And I mean nothing.  It’s not until Dr. Daniels goes to the world’s most ineffectual sherif’s department that anyone thinks anything is wrong.

7) Oh, that fucking soundtrack.  Yes, the original featured a soundtrack that could be obtrusive at time, but that was primarily to reinforce the film’s sense of place and time.  This soundtrack of alt-rock songs keeps intruding on us, as if it’s afraid that we can’t figure out the nuances of the movie without it.  Hell, I like some of the bands on it, but not when they suddenly intrude on every single scene in every single moment.

8) You know how this film annoys me right from the start?  It shows that the writers had no understanding of what the original film was about by ignoring the revelation of the ending and reducing Patrick Bateman to just a normal serial killer.  By hinging the premise of the film on that assumption, it makes the whole film spurious.  Now there is a (very) brief moment where it looks like the writers are going to play on the original film’s conceit, but that moment is discarded immediately so we can return to the too obvious plot.

Look, you know this is the only reason you're considering
watching this movie, so here's another photo of her looking
cute.

9) You know, the biggest problem with Wynn Davies’ Dr. Daniels as the film’s hero--besides the fact that he’s totally ineffectual (and morally wreckless) as a psychiatrist?  He seems to be an after thought.  There’s a strong sense that Starkman should have been the hero of the film, a sense that’s bolstered by Shatner’s performance...but after he’s given his pass out of the movie in an actually pretty good scene, Daniels is shoved into the hero role by default.  And considering the character has not displayed anything to feel positive about, what we can laughingly refer to as the film’s momentum is stopped cold.

10) Okay, this is an unrated direct-to-video sequel, right?  Then why is it so bloodless.  Not that I’m saying gore would have saved this movie, but it seems weird that we don’t get blood and ick in a film as aggressive about its mayhem as it should be.

Overall...a worthless, annoying film that seems to scream and run about like a toddler on a sugar high.  Supposedly, Mila Kunis is embarrassed by this film, which only proves to me that she has a good head on her shoulder.  Avoid.  Avoid a lot.