I'm not a christian as was not raised as one but i enjoy watching christian apocalypse movies. I'm not going to criticize the theology of the film because i can watch these suspending my disbelief in the same way i watch a zombie or vampire movie. That said, this movie repeatedly sets up unnecessarily illogical and baffling scenes and populates them with amazingly stupid characters. When the only character who shows any signs of basic intelligence is a bearded hermit who lives in a barn with an illustrated pull-down manifesto chart, you know you're in trouble.
The overall storyline is very simple: we're in the period of the tribulation. There's a one-world government led by the antichrist and you have to have the mark of the beast or you'll be executed... and that's bad, even though the people who refuse the mark are christians who know that they're going to heaven as soon as they're executed and also know that everyone on earth is going to be dead very soon.
I could criticize every scene and character in this movie, but for the sake of my own sanity i will choose a few mind-blowingly stupid things to pick on. This won't make sense if you haven't seen the movie.
Was the writer of this so ignorant of computers that he thought that one could hack a computer system with a pocket calculator? Kraftwerk would be proud. At first i was confused by the calculator scheme but later the mustache guy (i didn't expect the greasy state fair guy to make it to part 3) confirms that david used the calculator to make a fake antichrist account. The complex hacking operation via a pocket calculator in a barn was going surprisingly well, but the plan had one flaw: batteries die. Which brings us to the dumbest, most confusing scene in the movie: the grocery store sequence. Why did they have to buy the batteries at exactly the same time? Why not wait a few minutes, look around then buy the second batch of batteries? Why not buy more batteries another day? They seem to go to town all the time. Why did the lady buy most of the groceries and the batteries and go in line at the same time as david but he only had batteries and about four other things? Of course her transaction would take longer because she had more items. Why did the checkout lady have to write a receipt by hand? She's using an electronic cash register and the whole premise of this is that the central computer will see that two transactions are taking place at the same time, but she has to first write every transaction down after ringing it up then send the transaction to the computer? What?? Why was there a soldier in an apron carrying a cardboard box full of raw, unpackaged meat at the checkout lane? How did a steak get into his pistol holster??? What was that?? Why, after crashing the van, did the lady just leave without david? She didn't even check to see if he was ok. The entire scene made no sense.
Every single prediction in the fundamentalist christian end-times prophesy are coming true every day and this lady believes that all of the christians were taken by ufos? She's surrounded by people who do nothing but explain how these prophecies are taking place and she even has a huge, pull-down chart to study, showing every single step of the prophecy and she still doesn't get it?! There's never any evidence of ufos but she and everyone else believes that? How stupid are these people?
If the antichrist troops wanted to find the lady then why was it necessary for her to be at the prophet's rally? They had a tracking device in david's boot and he would presumably search her out wherever she was, so what did her going to the rally have to do with anything? And then when david grabs onto the death squad helicopter the pilot yells to his passenger "don't shoot! If he falls off we'll tip over!"! Yes. That's how that works. So instead of shooting him as they intended, they gently lower him to a field and allow him to run away while they leisurely land and eventually get out to chase him. Really?!?
On a different note, this movie failed in one other hilarious way - it led me to take the lord's name in vain many, many times. Watching these mark iv movies is like watching a zombie apocalypse movie where the characters watch zombie movies every day and discuss zombie lore non-stop but still can't comprehend that the smelly guys that keep eating people are re-animated corpses that spread their infection through bite and have to be shot in the head. It's enraging in a strange and repetitive manner. Five bags of popcorn.
The overall storyline is very simple: we're in the period of the tribulation. There's a one-world government led by the antichrist and you have to have the mark of the beast or you'll be executed... and that's bad, even though the people who refuse the mark are christians who know that they're going to heaven as soon as they're executed and also know that everyone on earth is going to be dead very soon.
I could criticize every scene and character in this movie, but for the sake of my own sanity i will choose a few mind-blowingly stupid things to pick on. This won't make sense if you haven't seen the movie.
Was the writer of this so ignorant of computers that he thought that one could hack a computer system with a pocket calculator? Kraftwerk would be proud. At first i was confused by the calculator scheme but later the mustache guy (i didn't expect the greasy state fair guy to make it to part 3) confirms that david used the calculator to make a fake antichrist account. The complex hacking operation via a pocket calculator in a barn was going surprisingly well, but the plan had one flaw: batteries die. Which brings us to the dumbest, most confusing scene in the movie: the grocery store sequence. Why did they have to buy the batteries at exactly the same time? Why not wait a few minutes, look around then buy the second batch of batteries? Why not buy more batteries another day? They seem to go to town all the time. Why did the lady buy most of the groceries and the batteries and go in line at the same time as david but he only had batteries and about four other things? Of course her transaction would take longer because she had more items. Why did the checkout lady have to write a receipt by hand? She's using an electronic cash register and the whole premise of this is that the central computer will see that two transactions are taking place at the same time, but she has to first write every transaction down after ringing it up then send the transaction to the computer? What?? Why was there a soldier in an apron carrying a cardboard box full of raw, unpackaged meat at the checkout lane? How did a steak get into his pistol holster??? What was that?? Why, after crashing the van, did the lady just leave without david? She didn't even check to see if he was ok. The entire scene made no sense.
Every single prediction in the fundamentalist christian end-times prophesy are coming true every day and this lady believes that all of the christians were taken by ufos? She's surrounded by people who do nothing but explain how these prophecies are taking place and she even has a huge, pull-down chart to study, showing every single step of the prophecy and she still doesn't get it?! There's never any evidence of ufos but she and everyone else believes that? How stupid are these people?
If the antichrist troops wanted to find the lady then why was it necessary for her to be at the prophet's rally? They had a tracking device in david's boot and he would presumably search her out wherever she was, so what did her going to the rally have to do with anything? And then when david grabs onto the death squad helicopter the pilot yells to his passenger "don't shoot! If he falls off we'll tip over!"! Yes. That's how that works. So instead of shooting him as they intended, they gently lower him to a field and allow him to run away while they leisurely land and eventually get out to chase him. Really?!?
On a different note, this movie failed in one other hilarious way - it led me to take the lord's name in vain many, many times. Watching these mark iv movies is like watching a zombie apocalypse movie where the characters watch zombie movies every day and discuss zombie lore non-stop but still can't comprehend that the smelly guys that keep eating people are re-animated corpses that spread their infection through bite and have to be shot in the head. It's enraging in a strange and repetitive manner. Five bags of popcorn.