This film had something like 6 different people working on the script and the end result of short on logic, mild on scares, and yet, intriguing. I enjoyed Michele Soavi's other two big films, Deliria and Cemetery Man, and I wish he'd come back to making horror movies. There's a lot going on in this flick and more often than not, things don't make sense.
The basic premise of the plot is that hundreds of years ago, Teutonic Knights with helmets that look like slapdash buckets are led to a supposed village inhabited by lots of witches. This particular scene is one of my favorites in the movie, with armored assailants running amok in the town, cutting off heads and using their horses to trample the hapless villagers. In my opinion, the villagers are innocent of their crimes of witchcraft as the only evidence against them is a 666 carved in a rock, which anyone could have done, and a girl has a cross-shaped mark on the sole of her foot, misinterpreted as the stigmata.
I think the writers are saying something about all churches in general when they infer that this church is built on top of brutal, evil event perpetuated by the early religious order and that if you dig deep enough in just about any religion you will find some things that the elders want to remain hidden, either out of shame or concern that it will destroy the foundation of the religion, etc. This isn't a "serious" attack on religion, especially seeing as how this was initially intended to be Demons 3 and got several reworkings to end up where it is. The scenes within the cathedral are the spookiest, with the camera racing around the different rooms and the dank lower recesses in unusual angles. Another aspect of the movie that sort of has a Hitchcock/Psycho feel is that you expect the two characters introduced in the beginning to be the heroes, which certainly isn't the case, and while the actual hero has a few scant scenes near the start of the movie, he doesn't really become the protagonist until about the last 20 minutes or so. And, since Dario Argento is producing the film, Asia Argento has to show up(natch). She's sort of a lolita, running about at all hours, sneaking out of the cathedral through secret passages, dancing it up at the local club with older boys, etc. There are also a few good gore scenes, like a heart removal. The ending is ambiguous and the film closes after the destruction of the church with the possessive blue light shining up from a broken seal onto Asia's face. Seems she is the re-incarnation of one of the villagers. She smiles slightly as she sees the light, which has some viewers thinking maybe she was being possessed and would carry the evil into the world, as the Bishop expected(The Bishop, by the way, seems to be reliving a recent role he played in the excellent Name of the Rose). I, however, don't think she was possessed. I think the murdered souls were released and sought revenge against all those present in the church at the time of their release and at the end, Asia was merely seeing the souls of those she had known in a past life. Since she was allowed to escape from the church and live, it's doubtful she was possessed. But, as I said, there is not much logic to the film.
I don't blame Soavi for that, considering the source material. Recommended for fans of Soavi, not so much for fans of Argento or the unrelated Demons 1 and 2.
The basic premise of the plot is that hundreds of years ago, Teutonic Knights with helmets that look like slapdash buckets are led to a supposed village inhabited by lots of witches. This particular scene is one of my favorites in the movie, with armored assailants running amok in the town, cutting off heads and using their horses to trample the hapless villagers. In my opinion, the villagers are innocent of their crimes of witchcraft as the only evidence against them is a 666 carved in a rock, which anyone could have done, and a girl has a cross-shaped mark on the sole of her foot, misinterpreted as the stigmata.
I think the writers are saying something about all churches in general when they infer that this church is built on top of brutal, evil event perpetuated by the early religious order and that if you dig deep enough in just about any religion you will find some things that the elders want to remain hidden, either out of shame or concern that it will destroy the foundation of the religion, etc. This isn't a "serious" attack on religion, especially seeing as how this was initially intended to be Demons 3 and got several reworkings to end up where it is. The scenes within the cathedral are the spookiest, with the camera racing around the different rooms and the dank lower recesses in unusual angles. Another aspect of the movie that sort of has a Hitchcock/Psycho feel is that you expect the two characters introduced in the beginning to be the heroes, which certainly isn't the case, and while the actual hero has a few scant scenes near the start of the movie, he doesn't really become the protagonist until about the last 20 minutes or so. And, since Dario Argento is producing the film, Asia Argento has to show up(natch). She's sort of a lolita, running about at all hours, sneaking out of the cathedral through secret passages, dancing it up at the local club with older boys, etc. There are also a few good gore scenes, like a heart removal. The ending is ambiguous and the film closes after the destruction of the church with the possessive blue light shining up from a broken seal onto Asia's face. Seems she is the re-incarnation of one of the villagers. She smiles slightly as she sees the light, which has some viewers thinking maybe she was being possessed and would carry the evil into the world, as the Bishop expected(The Bishop, by the way, seems to be reliving a recent role he played in the excellent Name of the Rose). I, however, don't think she was possessed. I think the murdered souls were released and sought revenge against all those present in the church at the time of their release and at the end, Asia was merely seeing the souls of those she had known in a past life. Since she was allowed to escape from the church and live, it's doubtful she was possessed. But, as I said, there is not much logic to the film.
I don't blame Soavi for that, considering the source material. Recommended for fans of Soavi, not so much for fans of Argento or the unrelated Demons 1 and 2.