Franchises: The Prophecy. The Prophecy: Forsaken (2005)

After The Prophecy: Uprising, I just wanted to get done with this franchise as quickly as possible and so, I'm pretty sure I watched Forsaken either that same night or, at the very least, the next day. Since I felt that the previous movie was the low point for a series I was, at best, blase about, I had no hope that this could turn things around at all, especially since it seemed like it continued straight on from Uprising. Fortunately, while still not great by any means, The Prophecy: Forsaken is something of an improvement on that film, despite having a lot of the same issues. There's still a real cheapness to it, the story can be confusing to follow the first time through, and, despite a bit more action, as well as a short runtime of just 74 minutes, it's still a tad dull at points. Moreover, it feels like they're trying to combine the aesthetic of the first three movies with the one they established in the previous one, which doesn't help much; there's a revelation near the end that truly comes out of nowhere; and, whether or not this was intended to be the last in the series, the ending makes it feel like it shouldn't be, given how open-ended it is. All that said, it does benefit from some good actors and likable performances overall (that alone is an improvement over the previous one in my book), nice instances of cinematography and imagery, another nice use of Bucharest and the surrounding countryside, and some fine scenes and setpieces here and there, some of which manage to be genuinely creepy. But still, that doesn't change the fact that this is another one of the many mediocre, direct-to-video movies Dimension produced around that time and something you shouldn't expect too much from.

After she was entrusted with looking after the Prophet's Lexicon, former theology student Allison, still living in Bucharest, is horrified when a young girl named Maria runs out into the street after her ball and is hit by a vehicle; unbeknownst to her, she was encouraged to do so by Lucifer. What Allison also doesn't know is that a man she knocked into while running down to the street is a hit-man named Dylan, and she is his newest target, having been hired to kill her by a Seraphim named Stark. But, having had his fill of killing, and despite Stark's warning that he will undoubtedly go straight to Hell, Dylan commits suicide by shooting himself. Stark, however, uses his powers of resurrection to bring him back, feeling that the small taste of Hell he just experienced should be more than enough incentive for him to do the job. But, when he breaks into Allison's apartment to do it, Dylan is unable to shake the feeling that she needs to live, though she doesn't say anything that tells him why exactly. He takes her out of the house and, elsewhere, gives her a disguise that includes iron pills and perfume to change the taste of her blood and scent in order to throw off the angels searching for her. He then sends her off and goes to fight those that were chasing them, a fight he loses. When brought before Stark, he tells Dylan that, if she's not killed, Allison will bring about a genocide unlike anything mankind has ever seen before. Meanwhile, she goes to the Securitate country house and meets with Lucifer, who tells her that, within just a few hours, the Lexicon will identify the Antichrist by name, and that the angels don't want that information to fall into what they consider the wrong hands. With Lucifer unwilling to help her, at least directly, Allison is forced to flee into the countryside, taking shelter in a church, where the angels are unable to kill her. Stark, however, is determined to get his hands on the Lexicon and plans to use Allison's newfound trust in Dylan to do so. And though he claims to want to know the Antichrist's identity in order to prevent Armageddon for humanity's sake, he and the other angels on his side actually have their own selfish reasons, just as Lucifer has his reasons for wanting Armageddon to happen.

Like I said in the previous review, just like how Rick Bota made Hellraiser: Deader and Hellworld one after the other in Romania, Joel Soisson wrote and directed both Uprising and this over there, around the same time. And since he wrote the screenplays for them, with John Sullivan writing the initial stories for both, there's no one to blame but the two of them for the out-of-nowhere revelation at the end that makes no sense in context with the previous one. Since both of these movies, Soisson has been involved with others of varying quality, and in different capacities. As a producer, he's worked on the first Feast movie, the American remake of Pulse, American Pie Presents: The Naked Mile, and Piranha 3DD, while as a writer, he's done the screenplays for less than cherished sequels like Hollow Man 2 and Highlander: The Source. His further directing efforts haven't shown much improvement, as few of them have more than a 5.0 rating on IMDB; in fact, a number of them are down in the 3.0 range, like Pulse 2: Afterlife, Pulse 3, Children of the Corn: Genesis, and Cam2Cam. These two Prophecy movies are actually among his more higher-rated works on there@

Although she is the protagonist this time around, and is certainly more palatable than Sean Pertwee's Dani was in the previous film, Kari Wuhrer doesn't have much more to do as Allison than she did before, which is run around Bucharest as a target while protecting the Prophet's Lexicon. In this case, she's having to keep it away from Stark and the angels under his command, while receiving unexpected assistance from Dylan when he breaks into her house with orders to kill her. He gets her a disguise, as well as has her cover up her scent with perfume and change the taste of her blood with iron pills, and after telling her of the angel hierarchy, he sends her off on her own while he tries to hold off some angelic grunts known as Thrones. However, Allison does prove to be quite intelligent and resourceful in and of herself, as she hid a decoy Lexicon in her apartment, while keeping the real one elsewhere. She also heads back to the Securitate country house and meets up with Lucifer again, asking him who exactly it is that's after her and why. She then learns how the Lexicon will soon name the Antichrist, that the angels don't want that information getting into the wrong hands, and are unable to kill her directly, so they got Dylan to do it instead. But, when he tells her that he's not going to get involved, and that he only protected her against Belial for his own reasons, Allison leaves, only to be chased by some Thrones. She finds unexpected cover in a funeral procession for Maria, the young girl whose death Lucifer caused in the opening, and it leads her to a church, where she's safe from the angels. That night, Allison is visited by Maria's spirit, and she tells her that she died for her, as well as that some of the angels don't want human souls to make it to Heaven and that she mustn't give them the Lexicon, no matter what. Despite her fear, she intends to do exactly that, but unfortunately for her, Stark uses her newfound trust in Dylan to trap her. When brought before Stark, Allison, despite his threats, feels he can't kill her, even in one of the indirect ways he describes, for whatever reason. Stark lets her go and she retreats to the park, where she meets Lucifer once again, and he helps her suss out Stark's true, selfish reasons for wanting to prevent Armageddon.

When Allison goes to fetch the Lexicon, she gets attacked by a random guy with a knife and is stabbed a couple of times, but then sees and hears the voice of the angel Simon, as he encourages her to fight back. She does just that, managing to retaliate against and kill the man before he can finish her off, then heads to the abandoned house where she's hidden the Lexicon. Retrieving it, and finding it has just named the Antichrist, she's chased up the stairs and onto a nearby rooftop by Stark, whom she taunts by leaving 

various pages from the book along the railing. He and Dylan corner her on that rooftop, and Stark reveals that the reason why Allison was chosen to protect the Lexicon and why she's managed to survive up to this point is because, like Danyael in the third movie, she's a Nephilim. Moreover, he reveals that Simon is the angel who sired her, something that was never, ever alluded to in the previous movie, especially given what we learned about her backstory and how her brother turned her and their parents over to the Securitate. That, naturally, leads to the question of

whether or not Mrs. Simionescu was her real mother, or if someone else was and she was adopted by them. And regardless of which is the truth, if this was the purpose for her conception, it makes you wonder why they would've allowed her to wind up in such a dangerous time and place where she could've been killed. And if she is a Nephilim, meaning she can only die by having her heart ripped out or, as Stark hired Dylan for, by being shot right in the center of her forehead, she was never in as much danger in the previous movie and this one as we thought,

retroactively killing whatever feeling of suspense or drama you may have had. This is proven at the end when Dylan shoots Allison repeatedly in the torso and she falls off the roof, but almost immediately revives unharmed because of her Nephilim properties. 

And yeah, though we only see and hear him a few times near the end, Jason London does reprise the role of Simon's spectral form. The image of his face in that light feels more defined here than it was before, but he still has no real role in the story again, except to spur Allison on when it looks as though she's about to lay down and die for real. Most significantly, he's revealed to have been Allison's father, which suggests that the first Prophecy wasn't the first time he'd come to Earth, although that makes the series timeline and these last two films' connection to the first three shakier than ever. (It also makes the way he spoke to her in the previous film even creepier than it already was.) Regardless, Allison sees him again at the end after she's fallen off the roof, giving her the traditional angel sendoff of kissing his index and middle finger and motioning towards her.

The more interesting of the two protagonists is Jason Scott Lee as Dylan, the assassin whom Stark enlists to kill Allison. Dylan is, admittedly, something of a cliche: the hit-man who's tired of being a hit-man but is being forced to go through with one last job. The main difference is that he tries to get out of it at the beginning by shooting himself through the mouth. But Stark, just as Gabriel did with Jerry and Izzy, will not allow him to die as long as he's useful, and brings him back immediately. Despite the horrific glimpse of Hell in the short time that passed following his suicide, when he manages to sneak into Allison's apartment and has her dead to rights, he's unable to shake the feeling that she must live. He even admits that he's gotten that feeling on past jobs, but this time, it's really eating at him. Thus, he asks what's so special about her, wanting to know why his intended victim is a target for the first time in his career, but Allison only tells him that she's been entrusted with something important. Regardless, Dylan takes her out of the building and drives her across town to another building, walking in on an "acquaintance" of his named Gabriella, right as she's in the middle of "conducting business" with a client. Disregarding her yelling and cursing at him, he goes around her apartment, looking for a blonde wig he knows she has, and also grabs a slutty outfit, some iron pills, and perfume. He finally gets her to give him the wig, but only after he's screamed at her to shut up and reflexively knocked out the guy she was banging when he gets out of bed. After leaving her apartment, he and Allison manage to outrun some Thrones, and he has her change into the outfit, as well as take the pills and put on the perfume as a way to evade them, and gives her the run down on the angel hierarchy. He then sends her off, while staying behind and attempting to buy her some time by fighting the Thrones. Naturally, he gets the crap beaten out of him and is taken before Stark, who bats him around some more, while telling him why Allison needs to die. After he's tortured him some more, Stark makes it clear to Dylan that he's now going to use Allison's newfound trust in her to his advantage, and he'd best not betray him again.

Lee, whom I always think of as Mowgli in the 1994 live-action version of The Jungle Book, is one of the better parts of the movie's very small main cast. For one, he manages to get across how efficient Dylan is as a hit-man, having memorized Allison's morning routine down to the letter after he first bumped into her on the day young Maria died, and managing to sneak into her apartment without her knowing. The same goes for the conflict Dylan feels about continuing to do this work, especially since he knows 

his employer this time is no ordinary contractor. Seeing no other way out, and despite being warned by Stark that he will go straight to Hell if he does it, Dylan does shoot himself, only to get a glimpse of Hell that terrifies him enough to where he agrees to do as Stark says when he brings him back to life. And when he, again, is hit with a fit of conscience over having to kill Allison when he's face-to-face with her, his reasoning for wanting to know what's so special about her is tempered by his terror over what's

waiting for him on the other side. Though she doesn't tell him enough to really make him understand what he's risking eternal damnation for, he's good enough to help her out. Also, Dylan is wonderfully charismatic and even funny, especially in the scene with Gabriella. It's hilarious how he nonchalantly walks in on her having sex with a guy and, as she's yelling at him while completely naked, he ignores her, saying, "I just need a few things." He walks over to her bathroom, while she's still going on, and just goes, "Blah, blah, blah." He then tests the perfume he finds

in there, recoiling at the smell of it, and takes another bottle, before walking back into the bedroom, yelling at her, "Will you shut up?!", and randomly backhanding the guy when he gets out of bed and walks behind him. Gabriella then demands, "What are you doing?", and Dylan answers, "Still waiting on the wig." She grabs it and throws it at him, asking if it makes him happy, and answers, "Happy's got nothing to do with it. Trust me," before proceeding to properly introduce her to Allison. Following that, when he's telling her about the angel hierarchy, he does it in a

very affable, off-the-cuff way, saying, "Now the Cherubs, don't let that Hallmark shit fool you. They'll rip your heart out first and bless you later." When he then says he's going to try to fight the Thrones, much to Allison's shock, he tells her, "Read your Bible. Jacob wrestled an angel for one whole night. Might settle for a good twenty seconds." And before they part, she tells him this is all over a, "Very special book," to which he says, "It better be."

After some more torture at Stark's hands, Dylan is forced to go back to Allison, who's taken shelter at a remote church, and either kill him herself or lure her off the holy ground so the angels can do it. Reluctantly, he walks in on her, and doesn't deny that the angels told him that she'd be there, but seems to be planning on helping her again. As they finally spend some real time together, Allison tells Dylan how she studied theology and he, in turn, asks if she knows whose side she's on or if she's really doing the 

right thing. Allison says she has faith and feels she doesn't need to know why she's been chosen to protect the literal Word of God, but Dylan responds, "I think you always need to know why, no matter who's doing the asking." With that, after looking outside and seeing a number of angels gathered nearby, he gets her to leave the church, noting that if they don't, hundreds of them will be out there and that she can't hold out forever. He goes out to his car, which is right outside the gate, and tells her to come 

running when he starts it up. But when she does, he doesn't let her in, allowing the angels to take her, which plays havoc with his guilty conscience. Following that, he's seen at a bar, drinking and also dealing with the nasty side-effects of being undead, with cranial fluid dripping from his face. The bartender notices and suggests he see "somebody" about it, but when Dylan asks if he has somebody in mind, he comments, "Hey, it's your life, buddy"; to that, Dylan sadly responds, "No, it's not." Unfortunately for him, just as Gabriel kept stringing

Jerry and Izzy along to do his bidding, Stark shows up at the bar and says he needs one more favor. Angry, Dylan asks what more he wants him to do, saying he probably enjoyed watching him betray Allison, adding, "It's the only way you can still feel superior, isn't it?" Stark then forces him to come with him so they can pinpoint where she hid the Lexicon, leading to the final confrontation with the three of them on the rooftop. There, Dylan, who can now barely move, is torn between believing Stark when he says that, once he kills Allison, his misery will end

and he won't have to worry about Hell, or Allison when she insists that Stark "doesn't call the shots" and that he must have faith in God's will. Eventually, he shoots Allison in a manner that doesn't kill her, and which scatters the pages of the Lexicon everywhere, making them untraceable. Though Stark tells him that he's going to suffer for this, Dylan just smirks and says, "And to think of all the good times I'll be missing."

Like with Doug Bradley in the previous film, we have another beloved horror icon here in Tony Todd (another actor best known for playing a Clive Barker creation), but unlike Bradley, he has a constant presence throughout as Stark, the menacing, high-ranking Seraph who enlists Dylan to kill Allison. Also intending on getting his hands on the Prophet's Lexicon to learn the Antichrist's identity, Stark claims it's so they can kill him and stop Armageddon from happening, but in reality, he and the other Seraphim don't like the idea of Heaven being overrun by human souls afterward, given their jealousy for how they're absolutely beloved by God. Not wanting to get his own hands dirty, he hires Dylan to do the killing, bringing him back to life as his slowly decaying undead servant when he commits suicide, as well as torturing him and, above all else, threatening him with eternal damnation in Hell if he doesn't comply. He also seemingly intends to do something similar to Allison, as she notes that he won't be able to find the Lexicon if she's dead, and Dylan says that Stark, "Prefers to extract secrets from corpses. They tend not to lie so much." When Dylan proves unable to actually kill Allison, Stark has him trick her into leaving the church grounds she's hiding on, allowing his Thrones to abduct her and bring her to him. Unfortunately, not only does she not tell him where she's hidden the Lexicon but, despite his threats, she doesn't believe he would actually kill her because of how bad it would make him look in God's eyes. Even when he comes up with indirect ways of killing her, she isn't intimidated, and Stark allows her to escape, instead going back to Dylan to see if his memorizing her morning routine will lead him to the Lexicon. It turns out that it does, but Allison manages to get a hold of the pages and taunts Stark as he follows her up the abandoned house's staircase by leaving them along the steps and the railing. Quickly losing his patience, when he manages to corner her on the rooftop, he reveals that she's a Nephilim, sired by Simon, and attempts to demoralize saying she was bred purely for the task of guarding the Lexicon, making her nothing more than a tool. He also tries to push Dylan into killing her by promising to end his suffering afterward, and saying she's a liar when she says otherwise. Needless to say, he's beyond furious when Dylan shoots her in a non-fatal manner, causing her to scatter the Lexicon's pages everywhere, and even sobs in frustration. For that, he tells Dylan that untold horrors await him.

Just as Bradley was before, Todd is one of this film's highlights, managing to bring to Stark the type of imposing presence and mellifluous voice that served him well as Candyman (his dark clothing, tall frame, and elegant movements here also definitely give off those vibes), but while also project a charisma that he wasn't able to in his most famous role. When he's first introduced fairly early on, with him and Dylan in a dark room, as the latter prepares his rifle, Stark comments on how Lucifer talked young Maria into

walking into the street and getting hit: "You see how he took her life, without even lifting a finger? That's genius. Vintage Satan." As he sits by the window, working a slinky back and forth in his hands, he goes on, "It's all about keeping your hands clean. That's why we're such a good match, Dylan. I have to keep up appearances, and you don't care how dirty you get." When Dylan proceeds to list Allison's morning routine, which he's memorized completely, Stark comments, "A man who relishes his work." But then,

when Dylan turns the gun on himself, Stark stops playing and says, "No. No, you don't wanna do that. Eleven murders, topped off by a suicide? Believe me, Dylan, you are holding a nonstop ticket to a place you definitely do not want to go." Even that and a promise that he could keep from going to Hell isn't enough to dissuade Dylan, who shoots himself, to which Stark reacts by standing up, sighing, and asking, "Was it something I said?" Letting the slinky fall to the floor, he brings Dylan back to life and, as he lies on the floor, convulsing, as blood comes out of his mouth,

Stark, hovering over him, tells him, "Now, you're going to do exactly what I tell you, Dylan. You know why? Because you just had a brief glimpse of the place you're headed, and it wasn't pretty, was it? I didn't think so. Now, let's get down to business, shall we?" One of Todd's best scenes comes when, after Dylan flees with Allison, Stark enters the latter's apartment and calmly walks about, searching for the Lexicon. After he nonchalantly but intently searches amid a bunch of books and papers on a table (among them is a report on Dani and Laurel's deaths in the

previous movie), he calmly intones, "Where is it, Allison?", then starts ripping apart her bedroom, before pressing against the wall, inhaling, removing a picture taped to it, and, commenting, "So simple-minded," punches through it, pulling out the book. But then, he finds it's a decoy, made up of magazine articles, some of them dirty, bound within the Lexicon's front and back covers.

As big and muscular as Dylan is, Todd is just so imposing and carries a sense of power with him that it's not hard to buy Stark tossing him around and torturing him after he helps Allison escape, menacingly telling him why she needs to die and that he's going to use her trust of him to trap her. And even though Allison is right in that he can't actually kill her, despite how much he'd like to, without destroying his image in God's eye, during their first scene, you can see just how much rage he has towards

her bubbling under the surface. When she lays out all of his personal faults, he angrily picks her up, along with the chair she's sitting on, and slams her against the wall, then calmly but creepily tells her, "I don't have to kill you myself. I could whisper a simple suggestion, have you step in front of a speeding subway train. I could force a neighbor to hurl you down a flight of stairs." Most unsavory of all, he forces a kiss on her and adds, "I could put a baby in your belly that would rip its way out of your womb 

in three days." Though she's still confident that he can't carry out that threat, he tells her that he will kill her if he needs to, but lets her go for the time being. That's when he goes back to Dylan, asking him to think back to Allison's morning routine in order to pinpoint where she hid the Lexicon, and is not at all irked or put off by his yelling his disdain for what Stark is and what he makes him do. Stark has a real badass moment during the climax, where he crashes down through a section of glass flooring to reach the cellar where Allison is hiding. Landing gracefully,

and nonchalantly spitting out a piece of glass, he quietly stalks through the room, telling her that she can't hide from him, as he literally sniffs her out. And at the end of the movie, when he and Dylan confront her on the roof, Stark, after outing her as a Nephilim and cruelly telling her that she's nothing more than a tool for Heaven, orders Dylan to kill her by shooting her in the middle of her forehead: "It's the only way she can die, short of ripping out her heart, of course. That would be... messy." Pointing at his own forehead, he orders Dylan, "Go a-head. Right in the

sweet spot," and when Dylan is conflicted, Stark, besides promising to save his soul, adds, "If you act right now, I'll even throw in a nice, shiny, gold merit badge. Now, what's not to like here?" He then gets frustrated at Dylan's continued hesitation, angrily repeating, "Shoot the girl, and take the book," popping the word "book" the second time he says it. And finally, when the pages are lost to him, Todd gets across how frustrated and distraught to the point of tears Stark is over it.

Like Kari Wuhrer and Jason London, John Light also returns from the previous film as Lucifer, albeit in a more subdued capacity. As with the last movie, it begins with a piece of narration from him that gets into one of the key themes here: "The last chapter of the Bible is called Revelations. It promises the end of life as we know it. If that's the case, you might want to ask yourself: Is that really such a good thing?" Following the opening flashback of Father Constantin's death and Allison finding and taking the Lexicon, Lucifer appears to the young girl named Maria, greeting and speaking to her in Romanian, after which she walks out into the street and is run over. He doesn't appear again until Allison goes to the Securitate country house, seeking his help since he's actually the only person she can turn to. When she shows up, Lucifer is first heard, commenting on her hooker disguise and blonde wig, "You look remarkably stylish for a marked woman," and then asks, "How are we sleeping these nights?" Allison says she isn't thinking about sleeping at the moment and Lucifer remarks, "Demagogues, martyrs, schizophrenics... they all tend to run toward insomnia," before stepping out of the darkness across the room from her. She asks him who the angels are that are after her and why, and while Lucifer says he might not be the one to tell her about how Heaven's politics work, he explains that the Lexicon will soon name the Antichrist and these angels are treating her and the book in the same way that governments on Earth would treat a powerful nuclear weapon. He also tells her that the angels also have codes of conduct regarding murder, which is why they hired Dylan to take her out. Allison then asks him for help but she finds him unwilling, saying he protected her from Belial for his own reasons, adding, "Word of advice: don't ever assume you know my motives. Ever." 

However, it turns out that his leading Maria to her death at the beginning was part of a long, protracted means of helping Allison, as she's able to use a funeral procession for Maria as cover from some Thrones, allowing her to seek refuge in the church. And after Allison's first encounter with Stark, Lucifer appears to her in a park and helps her work out the real reason why Stark and other Seraphim want to prevent Armageddon. In addition, he admits that he wants it to take place, as he'll be able to take however

millions of souls aren't allowed in Heaven to Hell, saying, "Hell looks to be a very busy place in the next few years." And when Allison deduces that she's kind of helping him by protecting the Lexicon, he says, in his final line, "Sometimes the interests of Heaven and Hell are not so very different, Allison. Get used to it." Lucifer hangs around for a little bit more after that, watching Allison as she heads over to the Lexicon's hiding place, as well as when she gets attacked and then retaliates against him thanks to Simon's encouragement. Whether or not he had anything to do with that random attack is never made clear.

Like in Uprising, Light brings a feeling of Shakespearean gravitas and dry wit to Lucifer, with moments like when he admits he has a taste for Twinkies and, when Allison says, "Maybe it's the angel-food cake," he looks at her and comments, "God forbid,"; and also when he tells her, as she's walking around the park, talking to herself, "Careful, Allison. People might think you're crazy," before adding, "I love this park. Perverts and lunatics everywhere. I'm like a kid in a candy store."

However, while he came off as a definite anti-hero before in how he aided Dani and Allison in stopping Belial, even if it was for his own reasons, he's a bit more overtly malevolent here, despite more or less doing the same thing. Though it does eventually prove beneficial for Allison, his first action of sending Maria to her death is definitely cruel and evil, and when Allison later says he didn't need to kill her, he notes, "She was going to die anyway... eventually." And when she guesses why he wants Armageddon to happen, he smiles evilly and delightfully intones, "A

billion corrupt new souls, dancing on my doorstep." The one thing I find strange, though, is how he doesn't even acknowledge that the Antichrist is, obviously, meant to be his child, which you'd think would be another reason why he'd want the name kept hidden. Given how this film ends, I have a feeling it may have been explored further if they ever did another one.

Maria (Daria Clobanu) is such a cute, sweet little girl that it's genuinely distressing when she gets hit by a vehicle at the beginning of the movie. Before she dies, she tells Allison that she has a message for her, but can't give it to her yet. After Allison has managed to use her funeral as cover from the Thrones, she appears to her in the church as a creepy ghost, telling her that she died for her, and that she won't be able to move on to Heaven because of Stark and the other Seraphim wanting to keep human souls out. She warns her, "Don't give it to them, even if they tear you apart," before disappearing.

Since both this and Uprising were shot at the same time, they shared many crew members, as well as actors, with cinematographer Gabriel Kosuth among them. Thus, Forsaken has a very similar look to its predecessor, but while it's still clearly very low budget, I personally find it more appealing because, save for the scene at the beginning when Maria is killed, that dreary, blue-tinted aesthetic is mostly used for dark interior scenes, like at the country house and the church where Allison hides out from the Thrones. The rest of the time, it's mostly shot with that warm,

gold-brown look in many daytime exteriors, along with a more naturalistic, dark look to some interiors during the day, like when Stark looks through Allison's apartment and when he's stalking her through the abandoned house during the climax. In fact, there are instances of cinematography here that are quite beautiful, most notably in the section that takes place in the countryside outside of Bucharest, which has some shots that are on par with the desert scenes in the first and third films. Despite how

solemn the scene itself is, the shots of the sun setting in the distance during Maria's funeral, with the procession and the gravedigger almost silhouetted against it, is very lovely. Similarly, there are big wide-shots of that church at night, with flashing lightning in the sky, that are also quite nice, and when Allison is hiding in there and is visited by Maria's spirit, there are some effective uses of darkness and flashes of lightning to give us only glimpses of the ghost's genuinely unsettling face. In fact, like the previous movie, that whole scene inside the church, as well as between Allison and Lucifer in the country house, looks both creepy and lovely at the same time.

Once again, Joel Soisson does manage to keep his direction and camerawork interesting, opening the movie with a slow-motion shot of Maria bouncing a basketball up against a wall, followed by a pan up to introduce Lucifer, a wide shot showing them across from each other before they meet in the middle, and a nicely suggestive manner of portraying Maria getting hit by panning up as she runs into traffic, then showing Allison's horrified reaction on her apartment's balcony, only for it to be constantly obscured by passing vehicles. After Maria dies, the

camera slowly pans up from her lying in the street, with Allison, her mother, and others kneeling and standing around her, and then goes up higher to show the street leading further down from the site, with Dylan standing right in the middle of it. Stark's first appearance is focused mostly on Dylan as he prepares his rifle, while Stark himself is mostly in the background, save for some inter-cutting to close-ups of his hands working his slinky, and only showing him when he stands up after Dylan kills himself. Even then, he's partially obscured in darkness, and we don't

get a good look at his face until he looms over Dylan to bring him back from the dead. The scene with Gabriella is done in one long shot that lasts for a minute-and-a-half, following Dylan around the apartment, which adds to how absurdly funny it is. There are also some instances where the camera circles around a couple of people, like when Dylan is having Allison put on the disguise he got together for her and tells her how the angel hierarchy works. During Allison's talk with Lucifer in the park, there

are moments where the camera zooms in on the latter's eyes and/or mouth, and sometimes it even pans from one to the other, particularly when he smiles after Allison hits upon why he wants Armageddon to take place. And, when Allison is shot off the rooftop at the end of the movie, there are some low-angles on the pages of the Lexicon as they're scattered through the air, showing how there's no way Stark will be able to find them all.

Still, yet again, it's clear how utterly cheap this movie is, right down to the opening credits, with the title itself look extra PowerPointy this time around. There are also more instances of POV shots that are overexposed, with static movements, to get across that this is what one of the Thrones is seeing; a really cheap-looking, high-speed sort of filter effect for the moment when Stark picks up both Allison and the chair and slam them against the wall; and melodramatic instances of slow-motion, as well as others where the action looks sped up and kinetic during some of the chase scenes.

Also like its predecessor, Forsaken does take advantage of both the main city of Bucharest and its surrounding countryside. The first act makes use of not only the city streets but also gets across how confusing the often buildings can be to navigate, with the connected balconies and exterior corridors (which sometimes feature hanging laundry right outside apartment windows), stairwells, paths that lead directly from the base of one building to another, and isolated pockets in-between the buildings, like the spot where Dylan has Allison put on the disguise he

got for her. We also spend more time in the countryside, where we see big, wide vistas and fields that span for miles and miles, with dirt pathways leading down the center, and the area outside the Securitate country house, with the driveway flanked by cleared fields that eventually lead into woods. As for actual settings, in Bucharest itself, we again see Allison's fairly well-to-do apartment, and also get a feeling of some more low-rent places when she and Dylan are first trying to evade the Thrones, as well as a kind of crappy bar where Dylan goes to drown his

sorrows after he betrays Allison to Stark. Speaking of Stark, he tends to hang out in a rather dark, oppressive, barren room, where he both revives and tortures Dylan to make him compliant. The park where Clara came upon and was possessed by Belial is revisited here for Allison's second conversation with Lucifer, although its lovely visage is undermined when he mentions the lowlifes and degenerates who tend to roam the place, not to mention the guy who attacks her with a knife. We also return to the country 

house that served as the climax for the previous film, although it's just for one scene and only in the main room, although we do get to see more of its exterior this time. The small church and graveyard where Maria's funeral is held also serves as sanctuary for Allison from the Thrones, even if it's a creepy one come nightfall due to the constantly flashing lightning and rumbling thunder outside, the way the religious imagery painted on the walls is illuminated, and the appearance of Maria's creepy spirit, whom Allison allows inside. Unfortunately, the setting for the climax, the abandoned house where Allison hid the Lexicon, is a pretty forgettable one, starting down in a wine cellar and heading up the twisting staircase to an attic and finally, a nondescript rooftop.

That scene in the church where Maria's spirit appears to Allison is probably the creepiest one in this whole series, with all the flashing lightning, the darkness and shadows, Maria's whispered offscreen words before she makes her first appearance, her dark silhouette in some shots (sometimes, you're looking at a completely black screen, when her silhouette suddenly appears between lightning flashes), and the glimpses of her face, which gets progressively creepier as the scene goes on. The shot of Dylan when she first sees him when he enters the church and

slowly walks towards her is pretty spooky too, even if you know it's him, and that whole setting gives off that same Gothic flavor we had in the previous film. It's also indicative of how the filmmakers seemed intent on keeping the feel and tone they'd established with Uprising, but, at the same time, also brought in some of the fantasy-action that characterized the first three films. Naturally, they don't have the budget for any car chases or fight scenes like in those (which were already limited in their own right), but there is a 

bit more excitement here than in the previous film, with the scene in the first act where Allison and Dylan are running from the Thrones, Dylan attempting to take them on, and the sequence in the second act where Allison is chased across the countryside by the Thrones and hides among the funeral procession while they search for her. While not truly inspired or successful, it is another element that elevates Forsaken that bit much above Uprising.

Another way in which Forsaken hearkens back to the first three films is that it not only brings back angels in physical form but also gets into the notion of their heightened senses, like smell and taste (Dylan tells Allison that they rely more on those than sight to identify specific humans, saying, "To them, we're all monkeys. We all look alike,"), as well as their speed, agility, and strength. However, it also introduces a new way to kill an angel, besides ripping its heart out (which never happens here), and that's to shoot it right in the center of the brows, a spot identified as the

"third eye." We also learn a little bit more about the different classes of angels, with Dylan identifying those who spend most of the movie chasing Allison as "Thrones" and/or "Powers," (as well as "Dominions" and "Virtues"), whom he describes as "Heaven's grunts," as well as, "Thick, slow-witted, totally lacking free will. Not a big threat if you see them coming first." Sure enough, they do come off as quite mindless, focused purely on finding Allison, and aren't at all discreet about it, as when two come upon her in her disguise, they sniff and lick her

without any hesitation, as well as speak in very unearthly tones. And when they're searching for her amid the funeral procession, they roughly push past everyone while trying to find her. One thing they do have going for them is how they're able to blend in among the riffraff and derelicts in Bucharest, with Dylan, at one point, unsure if a man roaming around in the street nearby is one. He also describes Cherubs, who seem to be more lethal but he doesn't elaborate on them any further (which makes me think that's what Uzziel and Samayel were, given how they had more personality about them than the mindless Thrones). Finally, he mentions Archangels and Seraphim, which seem to be the same thing, and are obviously, the ones we're most familiar with by this point.

The concept of Nephilim from The Prophecy II and 3 is brought back here, and like Danyael in the latter, Allison doesn't seem to begin to unlock her potential until after she gets attacked near the end of the movie, with the last shot of her reviving after she gets shot and falls off the roof suggesting she will soon be as strong and agile as full-on angels. And just like before, both the "good" and "bad" angels are portrayed in a similarly dubious manner. Apparently, even though the war in Heaven was seemingly ended in The Prophecy 3, not all of the high-ranking angels

who hated mankind were redeemed like Gabriel, as some Seraphim like Stark intend to keep Armageddon from taking place just so Heaven won't be overrun with human souls; in fact, according to Maria's spirit, they're preventing human souls from entering Heaven at that very moment. Allison also suggests that one of Stark's personal motivations is because he hates that God tasked her with protecting the Prophet's Lexicon. Plus, while Gabriel, who was going against God, was more than willing to kill, Stark feels he has a

reputation to uphold and would rather have a hired gun like Dylan do the dirty work for him. And yet again, Simon, despite being the most "benevolent" angel we have, comes off as something of a skunk, given Stark's claims that he sired Allison for the express purpose of having her protect the Lexicon, adding, "Think about it: the resilience of an angel and the resourcefulness of a monkey. You know, I have to admit there is a perverse logic to it. You were bred as a tool of certain partisan interest in Heaven. Nothing more, Allison. Just a tool." While he could be saying this just to demoralize her, given Simon's actions in the past, I wouldn't be surprised if this did turn out to be the case, despite how loving he comes across in his last appearance to Allison at the very end.

Dylan is the first undead servant to the main villain we've seen since Izzy in The Prophecy II, and as he kills himself and is revived right at the beginning of the movie, we get to see him slowly decay over the course of it, which we only got to see a little bit of with Jerry in the first one. He's already feeling the effects of being undead when he appears in Allison's apartment, stopping and wincing in pain at one point, but is still able to function. After Stark kicks him around after he helps Allison escape, the injuries and bruises on his head look more diseased when he

shows up at the church. Also, when she touches his hand, she says he feels really cold. Following his betrayal of her to Stark, Dylan really starts to look rough when we see him sitting in a bar, dripping a liquid that he says is likely cranial fluid, and his flesh is looking more decayed and festered than before. Much to his chagrin, the booze he's drinking doesn't even affect him anymore, and he has no feeling in his hands. And by the time we get to the climax on the rooftop, he's barely able to move, and his face looks especially bad.

The makeup depicting Dylan's deterioration is the most elaborate bit of work that Gary Tunnicliffe and his crew were able to do this time around, as this is the least gory Prophecy of them all. Since there are no heart-rippings this time, all you get is a little bit of blood on Maria after she's run over, a fair amount when Dylan shoots himself and is resurrected, some stab wounds that Allison receives from the man who attacks her in the park, and some bloody squibs when she gets gets shot up by Dylan. Visual effects are also, smartly, kept to a minimum, mainly used for instances

of filtering and strange transitions. The only full-on examples of effects work I can think of are when we see Simon's spectral form a couple of times, the shots of the words appearing on the Lexicon's pages, and some digital snow in a shot of the sky before Maria gets run over.

As I said, Forsaken does have a bit more action to it than the previous film, although said sequences are not even on the level of the first three. After Dylan gets what he needs from Gabriella, he realizes that he and Allison are being watched from nearby by a group of Thrones. Some others suddenly appear behind them and they run for it down the exterior corridor, brushing past lots of hanging laundry. The first group of Thrones rushes to head them off, but they manage to duck through a door and hide behind

it. Because of all the laundry, the Thrones didn't see them do this and momentarily lose them, until of them stops, sniffs the air, and walks back to the door. He touches the handle, touches it, and tastes his finger. Sensing Allison and Dylan, he rushes through the door and the other Thrones follow. A few moments later, after Dylan gives Allison his makeshift disguise and sends her away, he walks back the way he came, finding one of the Thrones waiting for him. He tells him that Stark wants to see him and Allison, but when he puts his hand on Dylan's

shoulder, Dylan responds with a hit to the face that knocks him off-balance. He slams him to the ground, then turns to go, only for the Throne to grab his coattail. Another Throne comes in and Dylan manages to floor him as well, but he drops his rifle in the process. He's restrained by a third Throne and punched repeatedly in the face, before the first one lays him out with an uppercut with the rifle's handle.

Following her conversation with Lucifer at the Securitate country house, Allison heads out the door, only to find that the cab driver who brought her there got tired of waiting and drove off. Forced to walk back, she heads up the driveway, surrounded by woods on either side, when she sees there are Thrones stalking her. She very quickly goes from a walk to a run, which they do in kind, until it becomes a full-on chase across the countryside. That's when they come across the funeral procession for Maria, with Allison

managing to slip among the mourners and edge her way through to hide, while the Thrones brutishly push through them. After a bit of searching, one of the Thrones finds that she discarded her wig, and she's then shown tying a scarf around her hair to further her disguise. After that, she attends the graveside surface, remembering what Maria told her before she died, then takes refuge in the church. Later, following her first meeting with Stark, and her second conversation with Lucifer in the park, she heads to the abandoned

house where she's hidden the Lexicon, when she's randomly attacked by a man who says the word "angel," then whips out a knife and stabs her in both the side and shoulder. She collapses to the ground, as he stands over her, but just as it seems she's about to let him kill her, she rolls over on her side and sees the image of Simon watching her. Like he did in the previous movie, he whispers into her ear, telling her that she's not done yet and that it's time for her to fight back. With that, as the guy is about to come down with the killing blow, Allison kicks him in the

groin, knocks his legs out from under him, and gets to her feet. He gets back up and comes at her, slashing the knife, but she dodges it, hits him in the gut, elbows him in the back, and puts him in a headlock and clinches him back until his neck breaks. She falls down on the ground, with him lying dead in her lap, and she gets out from under him and collapses on her back, holding the stab wound in her side, moaning in both exhaustion and shock from what she just did. She gets back to her feet and is about to head on to the house, when she sees that Stark and Dylan have beaten her to it.

While they try to get in through the front door, Allison skirts around the side and heads to the cellar entrance in the back, coming very close to being spotted by Stark. As they go through the front door after Dylan manages to open it, Allison quietly removes the barrier to the cellar door and slips in. She removes the Lexicon's pages from their hiding spot in the back, near the stairs, and unwraps them, just as the name of the Antichrist is revealed as Mykael Paun. She hears them enter the room directly above her and

tries to slip out, while Stark appears to sense her presence down below. He walks onto the center of a glass section of floor that's right above the wine cellar, and is then about to head out with Dylan, while down below, Allison looks up and sees him. She backs up and bumps into a rack, knocking a bottle off of one of its shelves. She catches it before it hits the floor, but the bump was enough to confirm to Stark that she's down there. He jumps through the glass and lands gracefully on the cellar floor. Shaking off pieces

of glass, and spitting a bit out of his mouth, he heads to the back of the room, telling Allison that she can't hide. He turns over a wine rack, spots a drop of blood on the floor behind it, and realizes that Allison fled up the stairs. He follows her as she limps up the winding staircase, leaving drops of blood on the steps. She reaches the attic and climbs through a window near the rooftop, while Stark, on his way up the stairs, finds a page of the Lexicon left behind on the railing. Irked when he sees it's not the page he cares about, he balls it up and tosses it behind him, while Allison

climbs across the side of the house's roof. As Stark finds more and more pages, and becomes increasingly frustrated when each one turns out to not be the one naming the Antichrist, Allison manages to get across to another rooftop. But no sooner does she than Stark comes out of a door, cutting her off. After Dylan slowly makes his way up there, it leads into the final confrontation that ends with him, briefly, turning the gun on Stark, before shooting Allison in a manner that doesn't kill her. She falls off the roof, scattering the pages through the air, and while Stark, after

futilely trying to find the last page, threatens Dylan with eternal punishment for this, Allison revives and sees a vision of Simon looking down at her. And the movie ends with a little kid catching the final page when it drifts down to him: a kid who has four marks on the side of his face and whose name, we learn when his mother calls for him, is Mykael.

This open ending is why I have a sneaking suspicion that this wasn't originally meant to be the final Prophecy movie, as we not only now know who the Antichrist is, from his name and what he looks like as a child, but we've also learned that Allison is a Nephilim and there may be more for her to do now that the Lexicon is complete. Plus, there's also the child's obvious connection to Satan, a dynamic it would've been interesting to explore. Granted, I'm not sure exactly how successful they both were, but I'm

sure that, had both this and Uprising done well enough, they would've made at least one more to tie up these loose ends. But I guess The Prophecy doesn't have quite the same cult status as something like Hellraiser, as this is where it's sat ever since. And honestly, that's probably how it should stay, given how this series really had no business in going beyond the third film anyway.

Like with Uprising, Joseph LoDuca did the music score for Forsaken and, while still nothing amazing, it's yet another element that's a bit of an improvement over the last film. Save for the ending credits, LoDuca doesn't reuse the music he created for Uprising, instead coming up with some new pieces, some of which make good use of vocalizing voices, such as a sort of children's choir for Maria's death and a similar, more mournful sort of theme for her funeral procession later on. And during the final confrontation on the rooftop, LoDuca sounds like he's channeling Howard Shore, as the music initially has that sort of constantly pounding, distant sound you hear in some of his thriller scores, followed by ominous, building strings when Dylan is torn over whether or not to shoot Allison; there's also some more of that eerie vocalizing when Stark tells Allison that she's a Nephilim. But I have to admit, the music I remember the most is this really tacky sort of techno beat that plays during the scene in Gabriella's apartment, which is unlike any other part of the score and makes that crazy scene even funnier.

While the previous film was my least favorite of the series, The Prophecy: Forsaken is actually an alright flick. It's still clearly a very cheap production, isn't all that well-written, especially in regards to the sudden third act reveal about Allison, it attempts to combine the aesthetics of the first three with the previous one but that doesn't make it any more successful, it's again not the most exciting movie, with the climax being ho-hum, and its ending makes it feel like the story isn't finished. However, what elevates it up above

Uprising is that you have more likable and enjoyable characters to watch, some genuinely good actors doing the best they can with what they're given, a much more appealing and less dreary visual aesthetic, some more instances of creative direction and camerawork, another good use of the setting, some moments that manage to be effectively creepy and even funny, little bits of action and chase scenes here and there, and a music score that's a bit better than the previous one. Above all else, at just 74 minutes long, it's hardly a huge commitment. I wouldn't absolutely recommend it, and if you're like me and aren't that big on this series anyway, this isn't going to change your mind on it, but there are worse ways to kill some time.