#1 ·
Look, the movie is trash—but not the miserable, bottom-of-the-barrel kind of trash like that «The Wicker Man» remake. It’s actually pretty watchable and fun garbage. Honestly, I enjoyed it quite a bit, so I decided to sit down and write out basically every major spoiler in the film.
(But whatever, I’ve marked where the spoilers start. 🙂 )
So...
The cinematography is gorgeous, the directing is solid, the actors are great, and the runtime flies by. There are some creepy, sudden jolts, too. And there's this one scene where a priest calls out, "I gotta call... someone!" The call... TADAM... comes from the other side via a high-ranking official who supposedly knows everything and has all the answers!
By the end, there’s this "ideological" twist that feels a bit different from your typical flick in this genre. But I'll save that for the end—major spoiler alert.
The Plot:
We follow a young, attractive scientist, Anne Hathaway, who works at a university and specializes in providing scientific explanations for miracles—you know, those things like when a statue of Mother Mary starts weeping. Our lovely, brilliant Anne Hathaway is an atheist, while her partner is a Black man and a believer. They make a fantastic duo; they have great chemistry, almost like Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, which is a shame because we won't be getting any more movies with them. Basically, in a sleepy little town called Heaven in the American South, the river and the nearby swamp have turned blood red. The locals are all deeply religious and suspect this is a repetition of the ancient plagues from Egypt.
And seriously, those plagues from SZ start happening one after another, and these superstitious townsfolk think God is punishing them for something. The scientist, though, is looking for a rational explanation. First, the river turns to blood, then frogs start falling from the sky... and as the movie progresses...
The rest of the Egyptian plagues follow, and SPOILERS...
****
LEVEL THREE SPOILERS
****
...
Somewhere along the line, we find out the scientist used to be a devout believer herself. She walked away from God during a humanitarian mission in Sudan—all because of what happened to her family during an incident involving some aggressive locals. Specifically, one large, imposing Black man who, with blood streaming from his eyes instead of tears and a machete in hand, keeps popping up in flashbacks. BOOO!
It turns out the movie isn't about a scientist debunking religious delusions or finding science behind weird phenomena... it’s actually a pure, unadulterated...
...satanic supernatural thriller!
****
LEVEL TWO SPOILERS
****
A satanic thriller centered around...
a Satanic child born right there in the town of Heaven, who is destined to trigger the APOCALYPSE!!! As it turns out, the Demonic Child is just a tiny, sweet little girl with big blue eyes (the child actress is adorable—honestly, she's cuter than Hermione in the first Harry Potter movie; she'll be a star in a few years!)
The girl comes from a weird redneck family, outcasts from polite society, living in a shack on the edge of the swamp...
The culprits? Satanic cultists, who were spotted performing rituals in that family's shack. (There were a ton of motorcycles parked outside the cabin, according to the film.)
Our scientist discovers that she is the only one capable of killing this Satanic child before all ten of the Egyptian plagues manifest in this unfortunate town... because she was once consecrated, you see, and the fact that she renounced God doesn't matter. She steps up to play the role of the angel-savior...
BUT... there's a TWIST at the end!
****
LEVEL ONE SPOILERS (THE BIG ONES)
****
The finale goes down in the ruins of an old Gothic cathedral deep in the Southern American swampland.
The scientist is brandishing a knife at the Satanic girl when she suddenly realizes she's making a massive mistake! She can't kill the girl, because the child isn't actually a demon—she's an angel sent by Almighty God to use the repetition of the ten Egyptian plagues to wipe out the EVIL in the town of Heaven. The "evil" is actually that Satanic cult everyone was talking about, which is really only *planning* to create a child to start the Apocalypse. The cult members are actually...
😈😈 😈
I I mean, literally every single resident of this tiny town! 😲
By the end, you've got Anne Hathaway wrapped up with that little girl amidst the ruins of some Gothic cathedral—only to be surrounded by the entire townspeople, all making the wrong sign of the cross and muttering something in Latin...
Anyway, let’s pivot to what I’d call the "ideologically" interesting part of this Satanic thriller. See, in your standard Satanic flick, Satan is always the one behind the supernatural mess. He’s the culprit for all the creepy deaths, the insanity, the pea vomiting, the head spinning, the random earthquakes, lightning strikes, or those Dobermans lunging out of the shadows... In those movies, you never see any divine help from God—the only weapon the fighters against the Devil have is some dry faith they have to dig up deep inside themselves...
In this movie, though, it’s flipped on its head. Everything supernatural is actually the work of God, leaving the followers of Satan totally stranded with nothing but their little charms and sacrificial goats. And in the end, all that evil—all those residents of Heaven who are charging at our heroine and the girl—gets struck down from above by a good God who saves our lead from a hopeless situation. Because, ultimately, we face the ultimate evil—that Egyptian-style death of the firstborn. And it turns out EVERY resident of this town is a firstborn child!!!!
Their demise comes in the form of MASSIVE FIREBALLS FALLING FROM THE SKY!!! There's this HUGE EXPLOSION and a SEA OF FIRE that floods the old church ruins... and once the smoke clears, the only ones left standing in a field full of flaming craters are our heroine—who isn't exactly a scientist anymore, more like a fanatic believer—and the little girl, who is basically an angel. There's one last tiny, half-baked twist at the very end that doesn't matter at all to the plot, but anyway, bye. Fun stuff... 👍
(But whatever, I’ve marked where the spoilers start. 🙂 )
So...
The cinematography is gorgeous, the directing is solid, the actors are great, and the runtime flies by. There are some creepy, sudden jolts, too. And there's this one scene where a priest calls out, "I gotta call... someone!" The call... TADAM... comes from the other side via a high-ranking official who supposedly knows everything and has all the answers!
By the end, there’s this "ideological" twist that feels a bit different from your typical flick in this genre. But I'll save that for the end—major spoiler alert.
The Plot:
We follow a young, attractive scientist, Anne Hathaway, who works at a university and specializes in providing scientific explanations for miracles—you know, those things like when a statue of Mother Mary starts weeping. Our lovely, brilliant Anne Hathaway is an atheist, while her partner is a Black man and a believer. They make a fantastic duo; they have great chemistry, almost like Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, which is a shame because we won't be getting any more movies with them. Basically, in a sleepy little town called Heaven in the American South, the river and the nearby swamp have turned blood red. The locals are all deeply religious and suspect this is a repetition of the ancient plagues from Egypt.
And seriously, those plagues from SZ start happening one after another, and these superstitious townsfolk think God is punishing them for something. The scientist, though, is looking for a rational explanation. First, the river turns to blood, then frogs start falling from the sky... and as the movie progresses...
The rest of the Egyptian plagues follow, and SPOILERS...
****
LEVEL THREE SPOILERS
****
...
Somewhere along the line, we find out the scientist used to be a devout believer herself. She walked away from God during a humanitarian mission in Sudan—all because of what happened to her family during an incident involving some aggressive locals. Specifically, one large, imposing Black man who, with blood streaming from his eyes instead of tears and a machete in hand, keeps popping up in flashbacks. BOOO!
It turns out the movie isn't about a scientist debunking religious delusions or finding science behind weird phenomena... it’s actually a pure, unadulterated...
...satanic supernatural thriller!
****
LEVEL TWO SPOILERS
****
A satanic thriller centered around...
a Satanic child born right there in the town of Heaven, who is destined to trigger the APOCALYPSE!!! As it turns out, the Demonic Child is just a tiny, sweet little girl with big blue eyes (the child actress is adorable—honestly, she's cuter than Hermione in the first Harry Potter movie; she'll be a star in a few years!)
The girl comes from a weird redneck family, outcasts from polite society, living in a shack on the edge of the swamp...
The culprits? Satanic cultists, who were spotted performing rituals in that family's shack. (There were a ton of motorcycles parked outside the cabin, according to the film.)
Our scientist discovers that she is the only one capable of killing this Satanic child before all ten of the Egyptian plagues manifest in this unfortunate town... because she was once consecrated, you see, and the fact that she renounced God doesn't matter. She steps up to play the role of the angel-savior...
BUT... there's a TWIST at the end!
****
LEVEL ONE SPOILERS (THE BIG ONES)
****
The finale goes down in the ruins of an old Gothic cathedral deep in the Southern American swampland.
The scientist is brandishing a knife at the Satanic girl when she suddenly realizes she's making a massive mistake! She can't kill the girl, because the child isn't actually a demon—she's an angel sent by Almighty God to use the repetition of the ten Egyptian plagues to wipe out the EVIL in the town of Heaven. The "evil" is actually that Satanic cult everyone was talking about, which is really only *planning* to create a child to start the Apocalypse. The cult members are actually...
😈😈 😈
I I mean, literally every single resident of this tiny town! 😲
By the end, you've got Anne Hathaway wrapped up with that little girl amidst the ruins of some Gothic cathedral—only to be surrounded by the entire townspeople, all making the wrong sign of the cross and muttering something in Latin...
Anyway, let’s pivot to what I’d call the "ideologically" interesting part of this Satanic thriller. See, in your standard Satanic flick, Satan is always the one behind the supernatural mess. He’s the culprit for all the creepy deaths, the insanity, the pea vomiting, the head spinning, the random earthquakes, lightning strikes, or those Dobermans lunging out of the shadows... In those movies, you never see any divine help from God—the only weapon the fighters against the Devil have is some dry faith they have to dig up deep inside themselves...
In this movie, though, it’s flipped on its head. Everything supernatural is actually the work of God, leaving the followers of Satan totally stranded with nothing but their little charms and sacrificial goats. And in the end, all that evil—all those residents of Heaven who are charging at our heroine and the girl—gets struck down from above by a good God who saves our lead from a hopeless situation. Because, ultimately, we face the ultimate evil—that Egyptian-style death of the firstborn. And it turns out EVERY resident of this town is a firstborn child!!!!
Their demise comes in the form of MASSIVE FIREBALLS FALLING FROM THE SKY!!! There's this HUGE EXPLOSION and a SEA OF FIRE that floods the old church ruins... and once the smoke clears, the only ones left standing in a field full of flaming craters are our heroine—who isn't exactly a scientist anymore, more like a fanatic believer—and the little girl, who is basically an angel. There's one last tiny, half-baked twist at the very end that doesn't matter at all to the plot, but anyway, bye. Fun stuff... 👍