The Second Coming of Christ

Good intentions, but horribly written, mediocre acting and way off from the true biblical end times prophecies. If there's nothing else to watch...

Sometimes in films there are mistakes, people pick up on those mistakes and make fun of them. Every so often there is a parody of the film: "Shawn of the Dead" to "Dawn of the Dead", "Space Balls" to "Star Wars". But this film is so horrible that it would be impossible to actually make a parody of it, because in order to do that you would have to make something which made less sense or had worse acting.

The "Sweeded" version of the film would actually be an improvement to the stupidity that was created here. The makers should be ashamed. All the actors have just seriously damaged their carriers.

This is a movie you can't make fun of. It's just awful in every sense. I want to bang my face to the desk after watching it. The sets are glaring fake. The actings are awful. The plot makes no sense.

The Second Coming Of Christ is pretty much what I have come to expect for most attempts by the religious community to create an evangelistic end times movie.

The cinematography is actually pretty good, the acting for the most part is better than average. Unfortunately, the weak part of this film is in its story; which while interesting, has poor execution of bump points to move it forward, causing progression to occur abruptly. The story also has a poorly executed resolution that occurs abruptly and lacks earlier set-up to explain what is happening and causes a loss of connection with how the story was developing. The ending feels like the screenwriter wrote to long of a story, and then needed to cut out significant parts of the background story that is needed to resolve the ending.

As for its content, as a reviewer of Christian and religious movies, it felt like this movie introduced quite a few strange doctrinal ideas, while also trying to introduce a science theme to explain end time prophecy. For an endtimes themed movie, it strays away from what could be considered the typical and most common endtime storylines.

One aspect of the movie that bothered me, was the decision to have the opening part of the film in either hebrew or aramaic, which completely assumes that the viewer already has a standing knowledge of the crucifixion story. Another part of the film was also filmed in another language, but the film is obviously written for an English speaking and comprehending audience. This added nothing of value to the film and if anything made an already structurally challenged story, more challenged.

Bottom line, its just a very odd and unusual story even for a Christian film. I didn't mind watching it, I found it interesting enough to watch it all the way through to the end, but the ending in particular is so abrupt, with poor build up and advance setup, that it left me feeling unresolved. A well written movie, even if its a bad movie, should always leave the viewer feeling both resolved and understanding what occurred.

All that being said, I am impressed that this was filmed as a short film and won first place at the Action on Film Film Festival where my short films have also appeared. I gave it an extra star, just because I saw that it premiered at AOF.

Obviously, this was not a major blockbuster heavily funded by the huge studios in Hollywood, so it's easy to nitpick the low budget aspects of this independent film.

I for one, appreciated the message and the effort behind this film. Jason London is an exceptional actor, and he brings a refreshing amount of honesty and authenticity in his role as John in this picture. Tom Sizemore made a small appearance in this film, and I would have liked for him to have a larger role, since he is also a great actor.

Some of the other acting was not great - but that's to be expected in a lower budget film. The set design could have been better in places, even with the limited resources, and some of the CGI landscapes and backgrounds looked artificial. Those resources would have been better spent elsewhere.

Overall, I did enjoy the film, even with its shortcomings. Without the brilliance of London's acting talent, this film would have suffered far more. However, my biggest issue with it is its departure from biblical accuracy in its telling of the second coming of Christ. This aspect of the film left much to be desired. That aside, I did enjoy it for the most part.