Did you realize that there are five (5) films in The Prophecy series? I didn’t know this until I found the discount Blu-ray box set during an idle browse of Best Buy’s video shelves. I knew there were at least three (as I spend a lot of time in video stores, and tend to pick up bad obscure titles like a trivia lint roller), but the final two had somehow escaped my attention. Five films meets the minimum requirement for The Series Project, so it looks like it’s time to belly up.
When I was a teenager (in the mid-1990s), I worked in a now-defunct movie theater in Santa Monica, CA. One of my managers was an odd yet gregarious fellow who had been working there for many, many years, and who had, over the course of his employment, affected several weird hobbies. He knew all about feudal Japan and the code of the samurai. He knew all about wendigos and their written history. And, most impressively, he knew all about angels and angelic script. He would often tell me fascinating tales about the history of angelic wars (i.e. the stuff that wasn’t to be found in either The Bible or Paradise Lost), the various Kabbalist runes that correspond to angels (he could draw them), and he even claimed to be semi-fluent in an ancient and obscure written angelic text, reportedly handed down from the divine beings to certain saints.
So when the well-regarded and half-remembered 1995 thriller The Prophecy hit theaters in 1995, I was already kind of on board. The Prophecy is a film about modern-day angels who are fighting a war with one another, partly on Earth, partly near Heaven. The angels are all cool-looking black-clad human-like beings with actual blood and frail physical bodies (their wings have been hidden or are merely eschewed by the filmmakers) who like to perch on things, who jerk about like birds, and who move amongst us with ineffable motives. They each carry ancient apocryphal books of The Bible, are tattooed with their Kabbalist identifying runes, and seem to be able to write in that very same ancient angelic text that my old boss would fascinate me with.
This is an interesting, fleshy, kinda badass take on modern angels living in a modern society – certainly more interesting than the bland romantics presented in City of Angels from a few years later (for a better view of that same story, go straight to the 1987 original, Wings of Desire). The series envisions the archangel Gabriel to be the central villain of the piece, although bad ol’ Lucifer does make an appearance in the first film. That Lucifer is played by Viggo Mortensen makes him all the more threatening. Gabriel himself is played by Christopher Walken (the mad iconoclast) as a scowling and vengeful child who wants more than anything to get back into Heaven and be near God “like it was before.” He refers to humans as “talking monkeys,” and resents that humanity is closer to God’s grace than angels ever were.
Other premises that last through all five films: Each film will, naturally, involve some sort of prophecy. Each film will depict an evil angel trying to mess with Heaven in some way. Angels can call people back from death the instant they die, and keep them in a state of painful living limbo to serve as their slaves. Angels don’t have eyes, but can shapeshift their faces to make it look like they do. Angels typically wear black, often long black trenchcoats, presumably to blend in. Angels can hear prayers. Angels bleed, and can be shot to death. Angels have a power structure, and can serve God, serve one another, or even serve Lucifer.
Let’s start down this path.
The Prophecy (dir. Gregory Widen, 1995)
The Prophecy is largely about an angel named Simon (Eric Stoltz) who has learned of an evil scheme by archangel Gabriel (Christopher Walken) to fulfill some sort of dark prophecy that would allow Heaven’s doors to be opened up to any and all comers. Gabriel is still resentful over a falling out he had with God millennia ago (“He doesn’t talk to me anymore”), and has been warring with other angels secretly the whole time since. Simon is seeking a Dark Soul (i.e. the soul of an evil, evil man) who is prophesied to draw more evil to him, and lead the world into a dark, evil time. The Dark Soul belongs to one Col. Hawthorne, a veteran of the Korean War, and a man who delighted perhaps a little too much in killing and cannibalism (we learn late in the film that Hawthorne has a souvenir box full of dried human faces).
Simon sucks the soul out of Hawthorne’s body (angels can kiss the soul out of the recent dead), but having it in his body will eventually kill him. To hide the soul, he shunts it into the body of a random 9-year-old girl named Mary (Moriah Shining Dove Snyder) living in Arizona, who begins speaking about decapitating Chinamen.
The main character of the film is a fallen priest-turned-cop named Thomas Dagget (Elias Koteas) who had a severe crisis of faith right at the moment he was about to be ordained. Sample dialogue: “Some people lose faith because Heaven doesn’t show them enough. I lost mine because Heaven showed me too much.” He gets involved when he finds a mysterious dead body in an alleyway who doesn’t have eyes, is a hermaphrodite, and doesn’t seem to have ever aged. The rune on the dead man’s neck implies that he may be an angel named Uziel (Jeff Cadiente). Uziel was also carrying an ancient, ancient copy of The Bible that had extra chapters in the Book of Revelation, all about how the angels might re-enter heaven. Angels are more like curators for Heaven. Rough drafts of humans, who would eventually be improved with more free will and fully-functioning souls.
The Prophecy metes out the appearance of Gabriel, and keeps the proceedings mysterious. The tone and pacing of this film are pretty perfect for a supernatural thriller; we’re not really sure what’s going on, but we have enough information given to build up the rules in our minds. This is the way a good movie mythology should be constructed. It also helps that most of the things in the film are all from actual religious writ, so most audiences – Catholic or not – should be able to recognize it.
The Prophecy is also pretty damn scary. Gabriel is a spooky presence, an evil killer, and a Devil-may-care badass who gleefully dismisses the people around him, puts them to sleep on a whim (he touches their heads while saying “Shh!”), and seems to become more and more unhinged as the film goes on. He enslaves two near-dead people (first Adam Goldberg, then, later, Amanda Plummer), torturing them with prolonged life. Darkness hangs over this film, and the ancillary images of young children being violated, evil colonels eating Koreans, and horrible violence make The Prophecy teeter from thriller into outright horror territory. It’s actually a darn good movie.
It turns out the Devil does care. Near the end of the film, Lucifer (Viggo Mortensen) does appear, looking as deliciously evil as, well, The Devil, announcing that Gabriel’s plan to open Heaven would essentially turn it into another Hell (angels refer to Hell as “that basement room”), and Lucifer can’t have that. He makes it explicit that he doesn’t care about humanity, but will help them because he wants Hell to himself. Of the many movie Satans I’ve seen, I like Mortensen’s a lot. He is less about fear and more about a seething, violent, turbulent, seductive attitude.
Everything works out in the end, of course. Dagget rediscovers his faith, and he is given a love interest in the form of Mary’s hard-working teacher Katherine (Virginia Madsen).
Religious implications made from this film: Humans are superior to angels because of their souls, i.e. their capacity for compassion. Humans can alter the fabric of the universe through persistent evil acts. God is the mastermind behind evolution (the “talking monkeys” lines imply that). Hell is small. Heaven may be empty (although Satan said that, so who is to say if that’s true or not). Angels age forever but are not unkillable. All religions are equally valid (as Mary is eventually exorcized by an Indian tribe in Arizona). Although the film is about crises and God’s frustrating silence, it seems to be ultimately very positive about having faith and how humanity will be okay.
Sadly, this semi-sophisticated and pretty good horror flick will take a schlocky dive in…
