The Prophecy

This is my first IMDb movie review so bare with me! I had very high hopes for this film as two of my favourite actors (Christopher Walken and Viggo Mortensen) star in it and also because even though I am an atheist, I enjoy movies with a religious context to them especially if they are of the horror or thriller genre. By the synopsis, this film sounded okay, nothing great but nothing terrible. The film starts off slow and I kept waiting for it to pick up but it never did. It fell flat on every scene. I was bored rigid watching it which isn't like me watching a film. I can usually find something riveting while watching a movie. The actors done their best with a weak script but it wasn't enough to make this movie entertaining. I'm usually quite generous with films. I know that most of the films I watch will never be amazing or memorable, they will be average and passable. Sadly, this one doesn't even cut to average. I wouldn't recommend this film to anyone unless its on the TV one day and you have nothing to watch while you sit and text your friends and don't actually pay attention to what its on the TV, you just have it on in the background.

I was in the test audience in one of the original pre-release screenings in Seattle. A friend got me a ticket, and we went together. Well, I'm not a horror-movie freak, but free's free -- and it had Walken in it. I would watch the man in a dog-food commercial. The movie was billed as thoroughly chilling. But very soon, what with the snarky bit characters and the underlying current of grim humor...my friend and I began to giggle. Soon the whole audience was picking up on the grin. This movie is funny. In a sly, wicked way. Watch out for: "Slow down, everybody's dead." We loved this line so much we had t-shirts made. We thought it would be a good thing to keep in mind these days. The coroner who says it is a classic in the tradition of his forerunners in The Big Easy -- and of course, Gillian Anderson in her Pizza Yearning Over The Entrails moment in the X-files. Coroner lines (oh, so many!): "Yeah, you can be impotent AND frigid at the same time." "It must be the teacher's edition." The cop sergeant looking for eyeballs in the radiator grill. Walken's zombies (in Prophecy II: "You kept me alive because you don't do DOS!?"). "My favorite." "Can't drive." And who but Walken could make "HI!" so terrifying and so incredibly funny at the same time? I can never watch the snot-moment. Viggo Mortensen -- you've never seen a man eat a rose-hip with such relish. Knowing how sour and bitter those things are -- and that Viggo actually crunched the thing up in his teeth without grimacing -- well, I was impressed. I'd never seen the actor before, but the soft breathy delivery was spot-on. He sounded as though he'd been breathing too much smoke. His devil lent a lovely commentary to the whole movie. "You think I'm bad? These are the guys who kicked me out! The whole system is rotten: I'm just the B team." Brings in the whole creeping terror of dark monolithic religion. Or, as Elias Koteas says: "You have to ask yourself -- do I ever really want to meet an angel?" And yes I have my own copy. And watch it -- ahem -- religiously.

There is a thin line between exploring new fields, and simple trash. "The prophecy" is moving on this line, and it doesn't decide itself for none of both sides. It isn't trash because of the interesting theological question (how can we love god if he is absent?) and the strong appearance of Christopher Walken and Viggo Mortensen; it isn't convincing either because of the non-development of the supposed main character, the unsatisfying end and the absolutely not convincing nexus between celestial and secular business.

The Prophecy is an excellent movie and is one of deepest films that I have seen. I won't give any info about the film except that the performance Christopher Walken was awesome! Plus other good performances by Elias Koteas and Virginia Madsen! Adam Goldberg and Amanda Plummer was OK.Eric Stoltz was great and his angel character is so likable.Viggo Mortensen was absolutely terrific!The music is very good!The Prophecy is a great film and has two other sequels but in My opinion they are nothing like this. I recommend every to see this film!

"Some people lose their faith because Heaven shows them too little," says Thomas Daggett. "But how many people lose their faith because Heaven showed them too much?" Daggett nearly became a priest; now he's a cop. He may want to put religion behind him, but one morning a weird, eyeless, hermaphroditic corpse turns up. Suddenly he is on a path that will put him right in the middle of a war in Heaven. And once again, Heaven will show him too much: gore, blood, charred flesh, living corpses and much worse. Even more central to the heavenly war effort is a young girl. This American Indian child has something Gabriel (Christopher Walken) wants. And Gabriel is willing to kill her and anyone in his path—or even reanimate a corpse or two—to get it. "The Prophecy" is disgusting, sloppy, confusing, pretentious, ridiculous and—when it tries to be funny—unfunny. And then Viggo Mortensen shows up as a self-satisfied, singing Satan with coprophilia on his mind. Does it get worse? Probably. The movie has several sequels.

Religion based horror movies have long been one of cinema's staples, and while that sub-genre is massively overpopulated; The Prophecy represents a more than decent entry in the cycle. The film reunites Pulp Fiction cast members Christopher Walken, Amanda Plummer and Eric Stoltz, and that's quite apt as this film is like a pulp fiction bible story. I dread to think what god fearing folk make of this movie, as we have popular bible figures such as Gabriel and Lucifer spitting out crass one liners and getting involved in punch-ups. Things like this make the film hard to take seriously, but it's also deliriously entertaining and the plot offers more than enough thought-provoking elements to keep the film ticking over nicely. The story follows a war in heaven, which was kicked off by the way that God decided to give souls to humans and not angels. The soul of an evil war general is the Holy Grail, and the Angel Gabriel has come to Earth in order to claim it. However, fellow angel Simon has had other ideas and has taken it upon himself to hide the soul from Gabriel. The cast is the film's main strongpoint. I'm not a big fan of films like this, but I had to see this one simply because it has Christopher Walken playing Gabriel. Walken plays the character a lot like he would a mob boss and it really works rather well as he ensures that every moment he is on screen is a treat, and of course, his screen presence is immense. The talented Virginia Madsen takes a lead role and finds herself paired up with the weak link of the cast, Elias Koteas who is flat and hard to like in his starring role. A pre-fame Viggo Mortensen delivers a memorable performance in the coveted role of the Devil and the central cast is rounded off by the charismatic Eric Stoltz. The story moves well, and it's real strongpoint is the way that it gives you enough to think about during the less exciting scenes by way of it's many plot points. The situation is brought to the screen well, and Gregory Widen's screenplay is good enough to ensure that every character is given enough screen time for us to get to know who they are. The special effects are fine and the film is well directed by Widen in his only feature film director's role. This film is, perhaps, not for everyone; but its good enough entertainment and I enjoyed it.

Filmmaker Gregory Widen learned a little, I think, from his previous outing with Highlander: it's not enough to get Sean Connery and have ridiculous immortals and beheadings. You need some fresh ideas that can live past their shelf life of the 1980s without going into complete repetitive mode. With the Prophecy he has a sturdy script chronicling the lapse of faith with an ex-priest played by Elias Koetas and how he comes into the investigation of a series of crimes involving burnt up dead people and lots of signs pointing to a prophecy of thins involving the word "dark". On the side of themes, things are fine. But he knew that his script needed some uplift and, as with Highlander, needed a star to carry it over past the genre fans. Christopher Walken was his key, and it's one of his true-blue "Walken-iest" performances. He's playing a supernatural creature of the underworld in the guise of himself, so he knows it's time to go to town, and he does. I can imagine Widen smiling to himself as he wrote such lines as "Study your Math, kids", wherein Walken could sink his teeth in and make it an awesome nutbar of a performance. He still brings the creepiness when he needs (in this case all he needs to do as Gabriel is to stare), but it's the superfluous sense of humor, a timing that might be deadpan if it weren't for the evil angle, and it works wonderfully. The rest of the film is good, I should still say. This is one of those underrated 90s movies that has people who like it or don't, which is the way it goes sometimes (at the least, I would imagine, the first film has a better rep than the sequels, filling up a trilogy which is slightly inexplicable given the ending of this film). Actors like Virginia Madsen, Eric Stoltz, Adam Goldberg and Amanda Plummer take up very good space for what they need to do, but it's Viggo Mortensen who comes out on top as the most inspired casting after Walken. His scenes as Lucifer are tense but calm, if that makes sense, and he has that quality that one may have seen in De Niro in Angel Heart. He's so convincing as him that he makes his own a character that's been repeated countless times - and not just because of the "Mother's feces" line. He notches up the rank of a solid genre piece like the Prophecy into something of a kind of minor must-see - at least for those of us that will dig Mortensen in almost anything.

You will most likely be offended since this movie plays around with biblical storytelling and fundies always hate that kinda stuff. Stick to bad Christian B-movies and you will be fine. Now, if you want entertainment, love Christopher Walken's awesome acting, and want a very interesting movie that will give you the creeps, pop this video in your DVD player and enjoy. There is very little SFX and it really doesn't need it. Walken carries the movie through sheer force of talent. Mortensen and Stoltz do admirable jobs with their characters, and for some reason this whole movie is unsettling...but in a good cinematic way. Mortensen gets in a classic "last word" which will make you consider using a night light from that point on. Walken is downright hardcore...and you will never think about angels in the same way ever again. A gem of a low budget film with good acting making up for lack of explosions, gore, and CGI.

The fact that it was about angels and a war in Heaven made this movie so unusual and totally different from other horror films. Creepy, Christopher Walken was so right as Gabriel, this part was made for him and the lovely Viggo Mortensen as Lucifer left me wondering who this handsome guy was. The story was made more interesting by the way they depicted the angels and the scene that Thomas Daggett saw inside the cave was horrific, with angels impaled on spikes, as far as the eye could see. I thought the fight between Gabriel and Uziel was brilliant and the way that Gabriel told Thomas that the cleft above his lip was him putting his finger there and saying ssh.