The first time I saw an advertisement for the NBC miniseries Revelations was in a movie theater in Miami. I was watching the pre-previews production the theater offered (something called “The Twenty,” as memory serves) and part of the show was an ad for this new “spiritual“ miniseries NBC was producing. Given the phenomenon box office success of The Passion of the Christ, there had been numerous reports that studios and television networks were scrambling to develop their own “spiritual” films in an effort to tap into what appeared to be a potentially large market.
Now, I remember the ad primarily because I thought about those news reports while I watched it: “And this is what they mean by spiritual cinema, huh?” It was the End of Days, yet again (only this time Arnold is too busy running California to fight Satan for us). I missed the show when it was televised (not necessarily deliberately, although some might accuse me of that). But when I saw it was available on DVD, I decided to give it a shot.
For the uninitiated, the story is a thriller which essentially portrays the world as caught in an long-standing battle between Satanists and those who serve God (it’s a bit fuzzy on the whole Christian thing, and the issue of how to be saved, etc). Bill Pullman stars as a Harvard scientist named Bill Massey. As the first episode opens, Dr. Massey is just returning from South America, where he helped capture the vicious Satanist who kidnapped his daughter and ate her heart while she was still alive as part of a ritual sacrifice. The thing is - this guy actually seems to have some sort of special powers. As their plane shakes from turbulence, the killer counts to three - and the turbulence stops. “Coincidence?” he asks. “You’ll never know.”
Article comments
1 - Tan The Man
Nice review... I tried to avoid this movie because I think most biblical apocalyptic movies are horrendous. But will probably watch it sooner rather than later.
As a DVD review, how are the special features, if any? Video quality? Sound quality? Packaging?
2 - Bill Wallo
There's an "on-set featurette" with interviews with Pullman, McElhone, Massee and David Seltzer, the writer/producer. There's no featurette on the show's Biblical accuracy, which I would have found interesting. ;)
As for the sound/video quality, as I mentioned briefly the cinematic quality is quite good. I watched the DVD on a Sony Vaio laptop with a pair of noise-cancelling headphones, so it's a bit hard for me to know how it would translate into a larger home theater environment, but I'm sure it would be fine.
The packaging is fairly basic. It's a two disc set. The covers of each DVD box are identical to the cover of the cardstock case (so not very creative). There's no interior inserts or the like.
3 - Nick Jones
"I tried to avoid this movie because I think most biblical apocalyptic movies are horrendous.
You are wise to be wary. This is another crapfest from writer David Seltzer, who also gave us such drek as The Other Side of the Mountain, The Omen, Prophecy, Bird on a Wire, Shining Through, My Giant, and Dragonfly.
4 - Tan The Man
I didn't Dragonfly so much, but that has more to do with my obsession with Kevin Costner movies. Uh...