Prophecy 4: Flogging a dead horse.
Truth be told The Prophecy was lucky to get one sequel let alone 4 of them. The original was an excellent little unexpected B film that thanks to Christopher Walken and a catchy theological themed plot got a little buzz, but every release since has progressively deteriorated in quality, leading to these two unnecessary films that are basically cashing in on the name.
While I’m feeling especially honest while these two films were only ever going to be ordinary fare it was the name that got me to rent them in the first place – a different title would have seen me walk past these two low rent cheapies for eternity.
Both Prophecy Uprising and Forsaken (4 and 5 respectively) feature the same new characters, are only 2 and a bit hours in length combined – with credits and flashbacks padding that – and were released in the same year.
They may as well have gone ahead and merged the two… but that wouldn’t have had completists like me shilling for two rentals would it?
Anyway for the purpose of this review I will see them as one entity and review same.
The film(s) take place in Eastern Europe in an area particularly run down and stricken with poverty, Dani (Sean Pertwee) is a cop who is not altogether on the straight and narrow. When investigating the death of his snitch he is joined by a man who claims to be from Interpol named “John”.
“Don’t try so hard – no-one will watch this anyway…”
It shouldn’t be a spoiler to anyone who was around for any of the first three films that John is a little more than he makes out, enter another Angel named Belial from the “other team”, a woman named Allison who hears voices in her head and comes across a “magic book” that both teams must have and we have our ingredients in place.
Uprising takes all the major parties mentioned above to a place that holds dark secrets for Dani and Allison… ummm, and that’s it really.
Please press eject and insert disc 2: Forsaken, which we hope you have rented because you kinda need to see it if you want to know how this ends.
So the crew were already in Eastern Europe, so why not bust out another unnecessary sequel?
Prophecy 5: Still flogging!
This one flips the bad Angel, now Tony Todd as Stark who is tall, skinny and more imposing, though he allows (orders) his undead human lackey Dylan (Jason Lee) to do most of the leg work.
Allison remains on the run in a disguise that makes her look like a 40 years older Kim Cattrall – that would have her at around 40 – Stark and the naughty angels are still after the book, Allison still hears voices and they still end up at the same mysterious house where they can all share visions and flashbacks, the same ones that padded out 4.
Same as the first 4 films now, Armageddon is looming. Some want it. Some don’t. And some poor humans are stuck in the middle of it to be unwilling pawns in the action because of whatever tenuous reason the writers can conjure.
It must be said that it is not the acting that does in these two films, Jason Lee, Sean Pertwee, Tony Todd and Kari Wuhrer do the best they can to not just throw up their hands and exclaim “Didn’t I just say that exact same thing in the last scene? And the one before that? And the…”
“I tell ya, this script makes no sense!”
The filmmaker obviously didn’t have the budget, hence the location, dodgy CGI, the doubling up of meaningless dialogue and the flashbacks upon flashbacks. They didn’t even use the Angel’s abilities much, no superhero stuff at all here. Which all brings me back to my original rhetorical question: WHY TWO FILMS? The two films could easily have been condensed into one 100 minute flick that still wouldn’t have been awe-inspiring, but would have been far less disappointing than the dull replica that picks from all of the first three films without retaining any of the truly cool – not always expensive – parts.
Final rating – 5.5 / 10. Not terrible, but definitely not good, merely a product that justified the release of a couple DVDs and perhaps put some actors’ kids through another year of school.
