God's Army IV: Die Offenbarung

A series of grisly ritualistic murders transpires in Bucharest, Romania. Gruff cop, Dani Simionescu (Sean Pertwee from "Dog Soldiers" and "Equilibrium" ) teams up with Interpol agent, John Riegert (John Light) to track the killer down. Meanwhile, Allison (new B-movie mainstay, Kari Wuhrer) is a church worker, who, after her priest drops dead, gets to be in possession of an ancient manuscript called the Lexicon, that is still being written by an unseen hand and holds the key to turning the tides in the war against God's army and the army of Satan depending on who gets to it first. Now she is being pursued by both in this movie that has tenuous links to the previous three films at best. Entering this film I was very skeptical about a Prophecy film with no Christopher Walken in sight and to it this film set on the shelf for some time before getting a release and my expectations were low to non-existent. I was surprised then that the film was better than the atrocious part 2. Sean Pertwee in no small part, helped with the enjoyment of the film with his excellent acting, even if the story itself is lacking. The metaphysical pseudo-religious mumbo-jumbo does tend to try one's patience before the film is over, and the lack of any real ending still makes this one pretty bad, it's just better than I had expected.

My Grade: D+

In Bucharest, the tormented detective Dani Simionescu (Sean Pertwee) is investigating bizarre deaths with the heart removed from the victims. The Interpol agent John Riegert (John Light) is assigned to be his partner in the case. Meanwhile, the clerk of the church Alisson (Kari Wuhrer) finds the local priest dead and a mysterious bible, "The Prophet Lexicon", where the last chapter about the apocalypse, called Revelations, is being somehow written. The voice of an angel, called Simon, advises her that she must protect the bible against a demon called Belial that wants to read this final chapter to have advantages in the war of angels.

"The Prophecy: Uprising" follows the same premises of Christopher Walken's "Prophecy" movies, but it is not a sequel. There are new characters and the story is also good. The locations in Bucharest and the cold and quite dark cinematography contribute with the atmosphere of the film. I liked the performance of the cast, especially John Light with his evil look and Sean Pertwee. I believe that viewers that like movies about fallen angels will also like this good flick. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Profecia: A Guardiã do Destino" ("Prophecy: The Guardian of the Destiny")

In order to understand this fourth movie of "the Prophecy" series it is probably best to have seen at least one of the three movies that preceded it. If that isn't an option then I will attempt to give my view on what this movie is all about. In the first movie it is learned that there has been a war in Heaven between those angels loyal to God (with the archangel Michael as their leader) and those who want to compel God to reverse his favoritism to humans (led by the archangel Gabriel and his angels). Lucifer and his demons comprise the third faction and don't favor either side. Yet another element is added by this particular movie when a demon by the name of "Belial" rebels against Lucifer in order to create a literal hell on earth. In essence then there are 4 factions that now exist and at least two of them are after a book known as "the Prophet's Lexicon" which predicts certain events which have great value to whichever side can acquire it. As it turns out, this book has been placed in the hands of a young woman named "Allison" (Kari Wuhrer) who is immediately targeted by Belial. In order to protect her from Belial a person named "John Riegert" (John Light) needs to first locate her and to do that he gets her long lost brother, "Dani Simionescu" (Sean Pertwee) to help him. Since the audience is not told which side John Riegert represents until the very end I suppose it would be best not to reveal that in order not to spoil the movie for those who haven't seen it. I can say however that another angel named "Simon" also assists Allison but his human form is never seen and the faction he represents is open to interpretation. Be that as it may, I liked this film much better than the first three movies if for no other reason than that it doesn't get mired in bizarre pseudo-apocryphal mumbo jumbo which totally rewrites basic Scripture. This one stays more focused on the matter at hand. Unfortunately, the best asset the first three movies had was the presence of Christopher Walken (as "Gabriel") and he is noticeably absent from this film. Even so, I believe that a viewer can still enjoy this particular movie provided that they don't get too confused with what is going on. Hopefully my review helps somewhat. In any case, while this movie clearly won't win any major awards and has an uneven feel to it I believe that it's possibly deserving of an average rating. But not much higher than that.

Surprisingly okay direct-to-video fourth film in the Prophecy film franchise (even minus Christopher Walken) about bad angels continuing to try to bring about the end of man. With Walken gone from the series, the new main bad angel is played by none other than Doug Bradley, best known to horror fans as Pinhead from the Hellraiser films, but the main character of the film is Kari Wuhrer, playing a woman in possession of an ancient secret tome that contains an unfinished chapter of The Bible describing in more detail the end of times. Writer/director Joel Soisson seems to have specialized in direct-to-video sequels ranging from sequels to Piranha, Mimic, Hellraiser, Children of the Corn, Pulse and so on and so forth. Of these low budget sequels that I've seen, none of them are great, but none of them are terrible either, and they all seem to be in this middle ground of being mildly diverting if you enjoyed the earlier films, which is my overall assessment of this sequel. Joseph LoDuca provides the film's music.

The action of the movie takes place in Romania (my country) and I can say that unlike other movies in which Romania is the base ground this one offers a very realistic view of the country. I was especially pleased to hear the excellent accent the actors have sometimes, which is a very hard thing to do, I've never seen an English man speak romanian like a real one. The characters in this movie are the most original ones I've seen in years. They're just like the characters in video games, you must think like that character to understand him and his actions. I give this movie a 9 because it's an original movie with an original storyline, although the movie could have been done a lot better. In our days it's very hard to come up with an original idea for a story, lots of movies have a common structure which make them box office hits (special effects, famous actors, nude scenes, etc) but at one point you get tired to watch the same thing over and over again. I hope that in the future will have more movies of this kind.