"It's 2025. The world as we have known in 2020 does not exist anymore. The virus has changed the world. Communism is all over the place. A global state developed. Meetings are illegal, traveling is illegal, and Christianity is illegal."
I HAD NO IDEA I WAS ABOUT TO PUT ON A CHRISTIAN DYSTOPIAN MOVIE.
Oh boy, the minute that last line dropped I knew I had hit the jackpot. For those who follow my reviews I've been watching a lot of really bad Christian media lately, but this is pure happy circumstance.
I'm sick right now, so while I'm bedridden I'm taking the opportunity to search for brainless, hopelessly stupid movies that won't challenge me in any meaningful way, and what could be more promising than a movie with a title like 2025: The World Enslaved by a virus?
This movie opens with a hilariously incompetently edited and shot car chase sequence that leads into a monologue during an interrogation sequence meant as a stand-in for the late movie inspirational "look what they've taken from us" speech, something that occurs within the first five minutes. I mean seriously, have you people never heard of an obscure little concept known as buildup? Speeches like this with the swelling stringed instruments to underpin what you're supposed to be feeling are only effective when we've actually witnessed two acts worth of the main characters struggling, first. But what really gets me about this speech is how it simultaneously tries to double as the opening expository "here's what the world looked like before and what happened to change things" moment, in which the main character explains these things to a middle aged agent of the state who is very obviously older than he is. Like, what? This movie takes place in 2025, and it came out in 2021. It has only been four years. You really need to explain to this dude twice your age what the world was like less than five years ago?
Sadly though, the rest of this movie doesn't live up to the promise given by that banger of an opening. It's quite surprising how much of this movie is bogged down with inconsequential filler. There's an entire 97 second sequence dedicated to one of the characters somberly preparing their breakfast cereal, an event that is painstakingly documented as she slowly, sadly gets the cereal out, weakly pours it in the bowl, gets the milk out, and sadly pours it in the bowl on top of her cereal, then picks up her spoon, and slowly and sadly stirs it around a few times, and then she sadly takes her first few bites while reading a note that's just barely illegible to the viewer due to how it's positioned on the screen, but it lingers on this shot for so long I couldn't help but get the sense I was supposed to be reading it along with her.
I mean seriously, as incompetently written and framed as Donald James Parker's entire filmography is, at the very least the man is efficient with his screen time. His movies don't contain a single wasted moment. For all of their inconsequential non plot related diatribes laden throughout, every single scene is packed to the brim with him communicating something to the viewer, whether it be his politics, what he thinks of himself, how he views women and racial/sexual minorities and Jews and Muslims, his general theology, and whatever else he happened to have thoughts on in any random minute he spend writing. Not a single moment passed in which I didn't feel like I was learning something about how Donald James Parker thinks.
But after 90 minutes of this, what do I now know about how the creators see the world? Mask mandates are literally the Holocaust? This majority Christian planet is hostile to Christians? Communism is bad? After that opening ten minutes I found myself expecting something meatier and more revealing about the creators than that. But instead all I got is how these creators have a massive throbbing boner for American imperialism in an unbelievable mid movie speech:
"Remember, we used to fight for other countries. We've freed countries from dictators, gave the power back to the people. We organized food and medication. Why did we do that? Because the dignity of man is holy.... They may take our lives, but they will never take our freedom."
Now this mid-movie speech about 40 minutes in is just astonishing. This is honestly how these people view American imperialism. Also, there's a hysterical, sick irony in how people with an apparent admiration for the idea of organizing free food and medication for impoverished Latin American people in the form of foreign aid would think communism is evil. Lol what do you people think communism is? And oh dear lord how dare your invoke the most famous moment from Braveheart for this thuddingly brain dead speech. Honestly this speech alone would have made the entire movie worth it had I not had to sort through so much fat to get to it.
Like seriously, with as much contempt as I found myself developing for Donald James Parker personally throughout his sordid filmography, little did I know he'd end up becoming the gold standard for incompetent fundagelical-with-an-insufferable-persecution-complex media production.
