La profecía 4: la revelación

In Bucharest, the tormented detective Dani Simionescu (Sean Pertwee) is investigating bizarre deaths with the heart removed from the victims. The Interpol agent John Riegert (John Light) is assigned to be his partner in the case. Meanwhile, the clerk of the church Alisson (Kari Wuhrer) finds the local priest dead and a mysterious bible, "The Prophet Lexicon", where the last chapter about the apocalypse, called Revelations, is being somehow written. The voice of an angel, called Simon, advises her that she must protect the bible against a demon called Belial that wants to read this final chapter to have advantages in the war of angels.

"The Prophecy: Uprising" follows the same premises of Christopher Walken's "Prophecy" movies, but it is not a sequel. There are new characters and the story is also good. The locations in Bucharest and the cold and quite dark cinematography contribute with the atmosphere of the film. I liked the performance of the cast, especially John Light with his evil look and Sean Pertwee. I believe that viewers that like movies about fallen angels will also like this good flick. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Profecia: A Guardiã do Destino" ("Prophecy: The Guardian of the Destiny")

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.

Since I have been bingewatching all of the movies in "The Prophecy" franchise, I have come to the fourth movie. This 2005 movie is one that I have never seen before now in 2019. Actually, I hadn't even heard about it before this year.

I found out that Christopher Walken wasn't in this fourth movie, but I still sat down to watch it, as I wanted to watch all the movies. And I must say this, the movie was actually suffering from not having Christopher Walken on the cast list, because he definitely brought a lot of charm and wits to the movie with the Gabriel character.

The storyline in "The Prophecy: Uprising" - the fourth movie in the series - is fairly straightforward and does keep true to the formula of the previous three movies. So there was a good sense of continuity to the franchise with this 2005 movie.

The biggest challenge in the movie, was the characters. I feel that the characters were a bit too simplistic, and not really given proper attention and details. As such, they were lacking personalities and proper meat on their bones, so to speak.

It should be said, however, that they had a good ensemble of casted actors and actresses to perform the roles of the semi-shallow characters, which includes the likes of Sean Pertwee, Kari Wuhrer, Jason London, Kari Wuhrer and the legendary Doug Bradley.

The movie had a significant upgrade in special effects, given the fact that this was made in 2005 and not back in the 1990s.

"The Prophecy: Uprising" is worth watching if you have seen the previous three movies. But as a stand-alone movie, then I wouldn't recommend that you watch this without having seen the previous three movies.

I watched this movie expecting to hate it, knowing that there was no Christopher Walken and more importantly that the Prohpecy trilogy had concluded perfectly with Prophecy 3.

But "Prophecy 4 (Uprising)" avoids all ties to the first 3, and so it becomes a standalone story with its own merit. Prophecy purists may dislike it for that reason, and I almost wish it had been released under a different title. But then I probably never would've heard of it, much less watched it. Maybe the same goes for you too. Dimension Films deserves to have its heart ripped out of its chest cavity for not releasing this in theaters.

Not only is it different in story & characters, but the style is grittier and has more of a "film" quality (despite the fact that this movie, as well as Prophecy 2 & 5, were direct-to-video releases). The story takes place and is filmed in Romania with an authentic European feel, and most characters speak with a British accent. And we all know that British accents immediately make a movie classy. Except when Keanu Reeves tries it.

"Prophecy 4 Uprising" is a great suspense thriller with a nice twist that brings it home at the end. If you're lucky, nobody has ruined it for you yet. You don't need to know about the plot except that, once again, it's about a bunch of angels behaving badly.

What I love most about this film is that it blurs the distinction between the labels "good" and "evil". All the Prophecy films touched on the concept of moral ambiguity, but this is the film that hits us hard with it, doesn't hold back, and even has a nice Machivellian speech near the end to emphasize the point. (If you skipped reading Machiavelli's "The Prince" in 12th grade Poli-Sci class, it's about the idea that morals & ethics do not exist in politics. Most politicians today would probably agree, though never out loud.)

Is there such thing as good & evil, or are they arbitrary labels we create to suit our own selfish viewpoints? This challenging theme can be found in many great stories like Clint Eastwood's "The Unforgiven", (the new) "Battlestar Galactica", and "Wall Street" (with Gordon Gecco's famous speech: "Greed is good"). If this theme interests you, and I'm guessing it does if you're a Prophecy fan, do NOT miss this movie.

A final word about the humor (an essential ingredient of all Prophecy films)... There are some great, witty & comedic lines in this movie. John Light & Sean Pertwee, two actors I'd never seen before, excel at their sly banter, giving us more than a few lol moments. Sure there's no Walken... but hey we'll live.

Movies I would compare this to in style & atmosphere include "Moscow Zero", some of the recent James Bond films, and the criminally-underrated masterpiece "Exorcist III".

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.