The Second Coming Of Christ is pretty much what I have come to expect for most attempts by the religious community to create an evangelistic end times movie.
The cinematography is actually pretty good, the acting for the most part is better than average. Unfortunately, the weak part of this film is in its story; which while interesting, has poor execution of bump points to move it forward, causing progression to occur abruptly. The story also has a poorly executed resolution that occurs abruptly and lacks earlier set-up to explain what is happening and causes a loss of connection with how the story was developing. The ending feels like the screenwriter wrote to long of a story, and then needed to cut out significant parts of the background story that is needed to resolve the ending.
As for its content, as a reviewer of Christian and religious movies, it felt like this movie introduced quite a few strange doctrinal ideas, while also trying to introduce a science theme to explain end time prophecy. For an endtimes themed movie, it strays away from what could be considered the typical and most common endtime storylines.
One aspect of the movie that bothered me, was the decision to have the opening part of the film in either hebrew or aramaic, which completely assumes that the viewer already has a standing knowledge of the crucifixion story. Another part of the film was also filmed in another language, but the film is obviously written for an English speaking and comprehending audience. This added nothing of value to the film and if anything made an already structurally challenged story, more challenged.
Bottom line, its just a very odd and unusual story even for a Christian film.
I didn't mind watching it, I found it interesting enough to watch it all the way through to the end, but the ending in particular is so abrupt, with poor build up and advance setup, that it left me feeling unresolved. A well written movie, even if its a bad movie, should always leave the viewer feeling both resolved and understanding what occurred.
All that being said, I am impressed that this was filmed as a short film and won first place at the Action on Film Film Festival where my short films have also appeared. I gave it an extra star, just because I saw that it premiered at AOF.
