La profecía 4: la revelación

I watched this movie expecting to hate it, knowing that there was no Christopher Walken and more importantly that the Prohpecy trilogy had concluded perfectly with Prophecy 3.

But "Prophecy 4 (Uprising)" avoids all ties to the first 3, and so it becomes a standalone story with its own merit. Prophecy purists may dislike it for that reason, and I almost wish it had been released under a different title. But then I probably never would've heard of it, much less watched it. Maybe the same goes for you too. Dimension Films deserves to have its heart ripped out of its chest cavity for not releasing this in theaters.

Not only is it different in story & characters, but the style is grittier and has more of a "film" quality (despite the fact that this movie, as well as Prophecy 2 & 5, were direct-to-video releases). The story takes place and is filmed in Romania with an authentic European feel, and most characters speak with a British accent. And we all know that British accents immediately make a movie classy. Except when Keanu Reeves tries it.

"Prophecy 4 Uprising" is a great suspense thriller with a nice twist that brings it home at the end. If you're lucky, nobody has ruined it for you yet. You don't need to know about the plot except that, once again, it's about a bunch of angels behaving badly.

What I love most about this film is that it blurs the distinction between the labels "good" and "evil". All the Prophecy films touched on the concept of moral ambiguity, but this is the film that hits us hard with it, doesn't hold back, and even has a nice Machivellian speech near the end to emphasize the point. (If you skipped reading Machiavelli's "The Prince" in 12th grade Poli-Sci class, it's about the idea that morals & ethics do not exist in politics. Most politicians today would probably agree, though never out loud.)

Is there such thing as good & evil, or are they arbitrary labels we create to suit our own selfish viewpoints? This challenging theme can be found in many great stories like Clint Eastwood's "The Unforgiven", (the new) "Battlestar Galactica", and "Wall Street" (with Gordon Gecco's famous speech: "Greed is good"). If this theme interests you, and I'm guessing it does if you're a Prophecy fan, do NOT miss this movie.

A final word about the humor (an essential ingredient of all Prophecy films)... There are some great, witty & comedic lines in this movie. John Light & Sean Pertwee, two actors I'd never seen before, excel at their sly banter, giving us more than a few lol moments. Sure there's no Walken... but hey we'll live.

Movies I would compare this to in style & atmosphere include "Moscow Zero", some of the recent James Bond films, and the criminally-underrated masterpiece "Exorcist III".

Since I have been bingewatching all of the movies in "The Prophecy" franchise, I have come to the fourth movie. This 2005 movie is one that I have never seen before now in 2019. Actually, I hadn't even heard about it before this year.

I found out that Christopher Walken wasn't in this fourth movie, but I still sat down to watch it, as I wanted to watch all the movies. And I must say this, the movie was actually suffering from not having Christopher Walken on the cast list, because he definitely brought a lot of charm and wits to the movie with the Gabriel character.

The storyline in "The Prophecy: Uprising" - the fourth movie in the series - is fairly straightforward and does keep true to the formula of the previous three movies. So there was a good sense of continuity to the franchise with this 2005 movie.

The biggest challenge in the movie, was the characters. I feel that the characters were a bit too simplistic, and not really given proper attention and details. As such, they were lacking personalities and proper meat on their bones, so to speak.

It should be said, however, that they had a good ensemble of casted actors and actresses to perform the roles of the semi-shallow characters, which includes the likes of Sean Pertwee, Kari Wuhrer, Jason London, Kari Wuhrer and the legendary Doug Bradley.

The movie had a significant upgrade in special effects, given the fact that this was made in 2005 and not back in the 1990s.

"The Prophecy: Uprising" is worth watching if you have seen the previous three movies. But as a stand-alone movie, then I wouldn't recommend that you watch this without having seen the previous three movies.

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+

I thought the movie was good considering that we're talking about a movie that obviously can never measure up to the original. I was a skeptic at first, but after seeing it, I now have a little more faith that maybe the movies would get even better and by the time 2307 comes, we might get an awesome Prophecy movie.

Joking aside, not a bad movie, go rent it...really!

The acting was descent, could have been more or better special effects, the plot was definitely interesting..a few good twists. I recommend that if you're a die hard Prophecy fan and wont watch unless Walken is in it, don't bother, but those of us who aren't, just plain see it for the sheer fun of a new movie.

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.