God's Army IV: Die Offenbarung

I began to suspect something was up when I found it impossible to obtain a copy of Prophecy Uprising from my local video rental outlet. Initially I chalked it up to the fact that they only had one copy in stock, as opposed to the bazillion copies most releases command. However, upon doing a tour of other outlets in my area I was consistently confronted with the same thing. Each store only carried one or two copies and all were perpetually rented.

Curious, I checked what online reviews I could locate and most uniformly praised the film as a highly entertaining effort.

Finally my luck paid off and I managed to score a rental copy, and based on my viewing I have to say that the reviewers were right. This is one heck of a tight and entertaining film.

In fact, it's arguably the best by far in the entire series of Prophecy films, even though it doesn't feature the great Christopher Walken at all.

I can only surmise that this film didn't get a theatrical release simply because the powers that be at Dimension Films must have concluded that the Prophecy franchise (if such could be said to exist) was on its last legs and had run its course. It would be a shame if true for this movie completely invigorates the concept behind the films, and lays the groundwork for at least one more film, one of which, I'm now of the opinion, could only be done justice if done by the same director (Joel Soisson) and writers as Prophecy Uprising.

Make no mistake about it. This is not some hackneyed special effects blood and guts fright fest. Rather, this is actually a pretty clever and tightly written suspense film done from a detective perspective. The movie relies on viewers to be familiar with the concept behind the original Prophecy movie, but only in terms of the whole war in heaven issue. Beyond that the movie stands on its own and does a pretty clever take on the concept put forth in the original.

Performances are sound all around. The direction, editing, scoring and production values are all top notch. In short, you really can't go wrong with this most fine of direct-to-video gems.

Now I understand why this movie has been hard to obtain. It's good, pure and simple. Check it out and you be the judge.

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.

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.

In order to understand this fourth movie of "the Prophecy" series it is probably best to have seen at least one of the three movies that preceded it. If that isn't an option then I will attempt to give my view on what this movie is all about. In the first movie it is learned that there has been a war in Heaven between those angels loyal to God (with the archangel Michael as their leader) and those who want to compel God to reverse his favoritism to humans (led by the archangel Gabriel and his angels). Lucifer and his demons comprise the third faction and don't favor either side. Yet another element is added by this particular movie when a demon by the name of "Belial" rebels against Lucifer in order to create a literal hell on earth. In essence then there are 4 factions that now exist and at least two of them are after a book known as "the Prophet's Lexicon" which predicts certain events which have great value to whichever side can acquire it. As it turns out, this book has been placed in the hands of a young woman named "Allison" (Kari Wuhrer) who is immediately targeted by Belial. In order to protect her from Belial a person named "John Riegert" (John Light) needs to first locate her and to do that he gets her long lost brother, "Dani Simionescu" (Sean Pertwee) to help him. Since the audience is not told which side John Riegert represents until the very end I suppose it would be best not to reveal that in order not to spoil the movie for those who haven't seen it. I can say however that another angel named "Simon" also assists Allison but his human form is never seen and the faction he represents is open to interpretation. Be that as it may, I liked this film much better than the first three movies if for no other reason than that it doesn't get mired in bizarre pseudo-apocryphal mumbo jumbo which totally rewrites basic Scripture. This one stays more focused on the matter at hand. Unfortunately, the best asset the first three movies had was the presence of Christopher Walken (as "Gabriel") and he is noticeably absent from this film. Even so, I believe that a viewer can still enjoy this particular movie provided that they don't get too confused with what is going on. Hopefully my review helps somewhat. In any case, while this movie clearly won't win any major awards and has an uneven feel to it I believe that it's possibly deserving of an average rating. But not much higher than that.

The action of the movie takes place in Romania (my country) and I can say that unlike other movies in which Romania is the base ground this one offers a very realistic view of the country. I was especially pleased to hear the excellent accent the actors have sometimes, which is a very hard thing to do, I've never seen an English man speak romanian like a real one. The characters in this movie are the most original ones I've seen in years. They're just like the characters in video games, you must think like that character to understand him and his actions. I give this movie a 9 because it's an original movie with an original storyline, although the movie could have been done a lot better. In our days it's very hard to come up with an original idea for a story, lots of movies have a common structure which make them box office hits (special effects, famous actors, nude scenes, etc) but at one point you get tired to watch the same thing over and over again. I hope that in the future will have more movies of this kind.