The Prophecy: Uprising

(2005) ***

Don't get me wrong, I'm really glad I finally got to my Kari Wuhrer film festival, but when it involves two Prophecy movies my rejoicing is always going to resemble the lackluster drone of yeahs that follow the phrase "and there was much rejoicing" in Monty Python's Holy Grail. This one, which is number four, is actually the best of the five-movie franchise. I gave it the same rating as the last one, but it's a little better.

I'll admit I was a little let down to see how frumped-out Kari's looking in this movie, but it makes sense as her character isn't very glam. She plays Allison, an haunted woman living in Bucharest who becomes tasked with caring for The Lexicon, a first-printing Bible that contains an extra chapter at the end revealing how the world ends and who the anti-Christ will be be. The last chapter actually writes itself as an old priest reads it, causing him a fatal heart attack and me a profound bewilderment that nobody had skipped to the end in the thousands of years this book was carried around. Maybe they had to read the whole regular Bible part first and got bored.


Stalking Allison is a demon named Belial who jumps from host to host like the bad guy in Shocker. Having read that particular demon name before I was pretty let down to find out it's pronounced like "Celia" and not "Be-Lyle." That's the fault of my own ignorance and not the movie's, but still -- another letdown. Also entangled in the plot are these two guys.


I called them "poor man's Paul Rudd" and "poor man's Russell Crowe." Russell there is a bent Bucharest cop and Paul is an agent of interpol except he's really Satan. Oops! Spoiled that for you. Seriously, you're fine. Belial leaves a trail of heartless corpses behind him as he switches hosts, and these two are on the case. It's like a buddy movie except one guy is Satan.

Uprising is actually fairly well-written and interesting, and stands on its own, apart from the previous Prophecy flicks. The plotline involving the bent cop is the best part, as his chats with his new buddy wind up exploring the cop's own dismal past. However, while there's some charm to be had watching the Prince of Darkness ride shotgun in a crappy East European car, this whole "angels in the gutter" approach just comes off cheap. All the Prophecy movies have this problem. Watching this I recalled the Russian movie Nightwatch and how it kicked ass dressing up the battle between Good and Evil in working-class trappings, so I know this can be done better. This series makes you wish for the grand theater that Heaven and/or Hell on Earth should be, and actually is in so many other movies.

As an afterthought I'll mention one bit of goofy in this film, which comes at the very beginning. There's a bunch of grainy footage of political speeches and marches and stuff, and then the movie starts with the caption "25 Years Later." But they didn't really show you anything relevant from 25 years ago. As the plot unfolds it makes more sense what they're getting at, but right at the opening it caused a giant cartoon question mark to appear over my head.