The Prophecy

A film about a war among angels. Thomas was going to be a priest. He sees something just before the ceremony and stops. Years later he is a policeman in Los Angeles. Homicide. He finds a body. The dead thing has no eyes and no sex, and its blood has been clotted for years. A book turns up at the autopsy. A known section of scripture with an extra chapter added. That chapter describes a second war in heaven. Gabriel has come to earth. The angel hates human beings and is looking for a soul to win the war with; the soul of a soldier who showed how far one can go. The soul is in a town in Arizona. It has gone into a small girl. From there the film is a chase. Thomas, Gabriel, an angel from the other side, and a schoolteacher, Katherine. Gabriel cannot drive. So he half-revives people who have killed themselves and uses them as drivers, leaving them incomplete every time. That detail sets the tone on its own: the angels are coarse, impatient, and not interested in people. What the narrative is interested in is not faith but jealousy: its idea is that the angels never accepted God preferring humans, and that this is the reason for the war. Lucifer enters as well. Hell's owner does not want Gabriel to win; he takes Thomas's side so that a second hell is not founded. Christopher Walken plays the part strangely. The angel talks with his head tilted, perches like a bird, and never once stands like a person. Gregory Widen wrote and directed; he had earlier written the screenplay for Highlander. Christopher Walken, Elias Koteas, Virginia Madsen, Eric Stoltz and Viggo Mortensen are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes low-budget 1990s supernatural thrillers and Walken's playing. Who it is not for: anyone looking for consistent mythology; the narrative invents its rules as it goes and the budget plainly runs out in some scenes.