I loved the original Prophecy flick, but it was well over a year before I thought to see if there was a sequel made, by that stage I was surprised to find that there were already 2 released, not bad for a low budget B movie.
Quick pointless story: I was in Bali and found The Prophecy 2 in a local market, when I arrived home and put it in the player it was actually mislabeled and was in fact The Prophecy 3. That’s really how I found out there were two sequels.
So when a small film successfully manages to create a great film with a small budget without a really big name cast, and then the bulk of the names depart, that doesn’t bode well for the franchise. Inevitably what then happens is that they release the quickie cash-in sequel with lazy plotting and el-cheapo production values, knowing full well name recognition will do most of the marketing for them.
That’s what makes things like The Descent 2, 28 Weeks Later, Tremors 2 and The Prophecy 2 so rare, key people that had a hand in making the original hum leave, they have seemingly exhausted the premise and yet the sequel is still a strong film when judged on its own merits, (and in the case of 28 Weeks Later is actually better than the original)!
To get us started here is a quick recap of the original film:
The Angels in heaven have split into two factions and are at war. One side is envious of the gifts God has bestowed upon humankind and basically wants to wipe out the human race, the other thinks “be cool Mun”, and just wants everyone to get along.
In the first film there was an evil soul that could turn the tide of the angelic war if it fell in the wrong hands.
In this film there is also something that might provide a great advantage to either side, in this case it is an unborn child, and this time as we are told early in the piece “the war between angels has come to Earth”.
Thomas Daggett, the ex-priest turned cop from the first film has understandably lost the plot and is holed up in a monastery mumbling to himself nonsensically and scribbling down his visions. (He has also changed from Elias Koteas to some other actor.)
This film revolves around a young woman named Valerie (Jennifer Beales), who looks very much like Valerie Madsen from the first film, only if she was a brunette and had longer hair. Anyway in this film Val is driving along minding her own business when she hits a guy. Now I won’t say he was a pedestrian because he wasn’t walking, he literally “fell from the sky”, being a film about angels we can guess where he has come from…
His name is Danyael, and when a distraught Val takes him to the hospital he is friendly enough to mouth “Don’t be afraid” as he is wheeled into the emergency room, despite the fact that he should be all types of fucked up.
Meanwhile Tommy Daggett continues to be crazy with all the visions.
There is a cool “Terminator” scene where someone is seemingly “born” from beneath the Earth’s surface, somewhere fiery and dare I say it “hellish”?
Good old Gabriel is back baby!! (At least they had the sense to bring back the best character from the first film, although while filming this Christopher Walken must have missed out on another 4 or 5 crappy films that he would ordinarily have taken. The man seems to have no quality screening mechanism.)
In the next 20 minutes of screentime Danyael makes a miraculous recovery, chats up Val and gets her four months pregnant in 2 days. Now that’s potency!
Gabriel also decides to visit Tommy for assistance and without expanding Thomas Daggett plays no further part in this, nor the 4 other sequels!
It turns out that Valerie’s unborn child will be the key figure in the angelic war, having been born of woman and angel known as a nephalim. In short Gabriel and Co want to remove it from the picture by any means necessary, and Danyael and Co swear to protect it.
Despite the mounting evidence;
– the recovered car crash victim,
– the 4 months in 2 days pregnancy,
– dead bodies with no eyes and organs,
– a warning from both the mortician who says “this has happened before, get away!”,
– and a chat with Thomas Daggett’s priest who says much the same
… Valerie is still skeptical, until Gabriel shows up and tries to rip the unborn child from her, somewhat against her will I would guess. And the rest of the film is basically a keep-e-off game between Gabriel and Danyael, with Valerie and her belly-bun as the ball.
There is ample opportunity for this film to veer into Highlander cheesy territory, but the reason that it does not is basically the fact that everyone plays it straight… except Walken’s Gabriel.
Gabriel hams it up in every Prophecy film he appears in, which is actually a good thing folks. Gabriel openly detests humans, he can sniff and taste them, but can’t drive or use a computer. As with the first film he takes a recently deceased re-animated assistant to complete such menial tasks, in this film it is actually Izzy, a recent suicide pact victim who just wants things to be the way they were when she was dead. (I guess she got her wish recently!) Gabriel treats her with disdain, bullies her and orders her around, playing the bad guy card beautifully.
Without Christopher Walken there would have been no Prophecy 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6. I know he wasn’t in the last couple, but this series would have died at 1 without his presence. (And I am not even a die-hard Walken fan like some.)
This could have been “Big guys in dark coats speaking formally while reading bible verses perched on a rooftop 2”, but that probably didn’t fit on the poster.
Thankfully the filmmaker who took the reins from the original had sense to hold true to the tone, rely on the story rather than big stunts and hokey chase sequences, and kept things simple enough to not lose track. The music is similar to the original, which is a good thing, and they also use the effective (but annoying when a 3 year old is asleep in the next room ) technique of hushed dialogue and loud effects and action.
I fully expected The Prophecy 2 to suck when I first watched it, and even recently when I dragged it out again I thought rewatching it would uncover hidden flaws and disappoint. It doesn’t.
Final Rating – 7.5 / 10. A case of second verse, much the same as the first, but a worthy sequel to a great film.
P.S. I twigged to this half way through watching The Prophecy 2. There are a large number of T2 similarites.
- The bad guy is “reborn” to hunt the unborn offspring of a human.
- The good guy comes from “elsewhere” to prevent this from happening, and manages to knock up the woman.
- The woman “can’t believe this is happening” for half the film.
- The kid will be a key figure in the future if it survives.
- The bad guy has special powers that render him impervious to many attacks and dangers.
- The bad guy is odd looking and has a weird way of delivering his lines.
- The franchise should have stopped at two films.
Coincidence? Or blatant rip?