A Brilliant Conflict

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

I honestly think that I could have offered better ideas for adapting this book to film while still keeping it under 2 hrs. The dramatic moments seemed to be focused in the wrong spots. I didn't really care about a dog coming back to life. (which wasn't even in the book)Furthermore, I was disappointed that Morgan Elliot was a veterinarian instead of a Methodist minister. Most of the messages about religion were deflated to appeal to a secular audience. And, in general, I felt that the movie was much darker than it had to be. I understand that it is considered a "thriller," but many of the more humorous characters, such as Dee Baylor, were either merged with other characters or left out completely. I so wanted to see Dee Baylor running down the street after Jim Baylor with a gun in her hands or Penny getting blown up in Don Anderson's appliance shop. For some reason I had imagined lighter moments when I was reading the book. Most of the movie is literally dark; it is either night time or we are stuck in a dark basement or something. And, what was with those lights flickering on and off in the supermarket? It looked like some sort of aliens or monsters were invading. Finally, I have to say something about the unoriginal special effects used when the demons are leaving the bodies. It honestly looks like a sorry attempt to mimic the same effect they used in "The Green Mile." The book is amazing, but this movie is less than spectacular. I really felt like it was a waste of time. Just read the 600 page book!

I read the book and watched the movie. I have some respect for Frank Peretti bringing Christian fiction into the horror realm, but everything he has written was overtly cheesy, unoriginal, and used too many words to say nothing. His movies aren't much better.The movie was insanely better than the book, but steals way too many scares from original horror movies like The Exorcist and maybe a bit from Evil Dead II.Family fun movie, nothing more, really.There is enough going for this film that it held my attention more than a lot of other sub-par movies, like Justin's scenes. Other than that, there are quite a few cliché elements, but not as many as you would expect from something like this.2/10

The small town of Antioch is slowly divided by the magic touch of a mysterious stranger. Robby Henson directs this adaptation of a novel by Frank Peretti. The charismatic stranger Brandon Nichols(Edward Furlong)appears to have the power to heal, nevertheless he also has an aura about him that is of pronounced menace. A fallen ex-minister Travis Jordan(Martin Donovan) begins putting back his unraveled faith and goes about proving Nichols is a false prophet avenging his past sorrows. More supernatural than horrific. Furlong is commanding as the malevolent messiah. Actually a pretty good movie. The cast includes: Kelly Lynch, Randy Travis, Joe Unger, Priscilla Barnes, James Horan and Richard Tyson.

Based on the excellent drama-horror book by Frank Peretti, this movie was more like a twisted, rewritten version done for film.The story was reworked and exposition was changed, characters changed, until the master screenwriter came up with something more fitting for today's Hollywood- in other words the end results was cliché, badly cut, and dramatic in all the wrong places. I wouldn't go so far as to call it a B movie, it was better than most B movies I've seen. More like a B+ or an A-.The editing and film style resemble a two hour long episode of CSI without the forensics- and CSI fans will notice that the cast is pretty much an entire ensemble of CSI extras.In the end, its like they say, the book is always better. In this case the movie could have been just as good, but they decided to make it overly dramatic and hackneyed with little real character development and evolution.Frank Peretti, I give you 2 thumbs up. Movie, you only get a tiny little knubby knuckle up.