Tribulation [DVD]

The story continues, pretty well from where it left off in Revelation, but with an interesting twist.

Leigh Lewis is back as Helen Hannah; Nick Mancusco is back as Nick Macalusso, and now the cast is expanded, with 2 international actors.

Gary Busey is probably most well know as psychotic mad men, as in Under Siege, but when he became a Christian, that all changed. Here in this film he is a policeman who didn't die in a car rash, and wakes up to find himself in the Tribulation Period.

Margot Kidder appears, not quite as a cameo appearance, but she is only in for about 10 minutes at the start of the film.

Macaluso is up to his old tricks and wants to use the Day ofWonders again to destroy the Earth. In case you missed it, e is the anti-Christ and is usng it to turn people away from God.

Helen Hannah is once again leading the opposition to him,and using TV to spread the truth. A one point, she is captured and appears to be eecuted for her faith.

Busey spends most of the film trying to find out what has happened to his family. Why he never stops to ask hat has happened but goes on happily looking is never quite explained.

How he find his family, with a lovely surprise ending, is again part of the story.

Detective Tom Canboro (played by Gary Busey) gets into a car crash which puts him in a coma for an unspecified amount of time. When he awakens from the coma he finds that the world is now ruled by a scenery-munching pseudo-Messiah, who forces everyone to either join him (and lose their souls in the process), or die. In addition to all this madness Tom discovers that his sister has vanished too. In fact, many people have disappeared, and nobody even seems to remember that they existed in the first place. Yeah, it's the Rapture. So, what's a lone nonbeliever to do in this situation? Well, this being a Christian propaganda film, Tom teams up with a Christian resistance group who are out to expose the false Messiah as the Antichrist. From there Tom, of course, rediscovers his faith yadda, yadda, yadda.

First things first: I'll admit that I don't fit within the target demographic that this film is geared towards (i.e. evangelical Christians). However, I like to think that even if I did wake up tomorrow to discover myself labouring under the conviction that God exists and that Jesus was the Messiah, even under those peculiar circumstances I would still see this film for the preposterous and sinister clap-trap that it is.

At the risk of being divisive, let's start with the "intellectual" content of the film. In his scholarly book "The End of the World as we Know it: Faith, Fatalism, and Apocalypse in America" Daniel Wojcik reminds us that apocalypse-themed hysteria has been a long-term tendency among Christians, with each generation finding some new way to interpret prophetic scripture so as to fit with the events they see around them. Today people are speculating that Obama might be the Antichrist, but it wasn't so long ago that the great idol of American conservatives, Ronald Reagan, was suspected:

"In the 1980s Ronald Wilson Reagan came under scrutiny of Antichrist hunters (each of his names had six letters, and in 1988 Reagan changed the street number of a mansion given to him by wealthy friends from 666 to 668) [...] One popular belief is that the Antichrist will miraculously recover from a seemingly fatal wound: Reagan's recovery from an assassination attempt led to speculation about his role in the endtimes." (P163)

This wasn't an isolated incident either. Everyone from Napoleon, to Henry Kissinger, to JFK, to Pope John Paul II, and even Pat Robertson, has stood accused for one reason or another. Long story short, every generation of Christian fundamentalists has been convinced that it -and it alone- has discovered the true secret meaning behind those obscure Biblical Prophecies, but those people have ALWAYS turned out to be wrong. Groups like the Jehova's Witnesses have repeatedly offered precise dates for the end of the world - dates which would set the time of Armageddon decades ago. And yet we're all still here.

So, there's a frankly embarrassing history of Christian goofs in the prophecy department. With that in mind. I wonder where I should stand when a film arrives which exists solely to propagate such paranoid fantasies, and to swell the heads of fundamentalist cranks with an undue sense of superiority? I think that contempt isn't out of the question.

Enough with the theological stuff. Let's get back to the filmmaking side of things. They were working on a low budget, so I won't be too harsh. Even with that having been said though, the script is filled to bursting point with plot holes, atrocious dialogue and general lameness.

The film is aimed at Evangelicals, who believe that proselytising/testifying is extremely important in their lives, so it's not unexpected that the Big Guy gets mentioned, or that we're reminded that Jesus is the only path to salvation etc', etc'. That's not surprising, or even a huge problem, as far as I'm concerned. What is a problem for the film is the sheer tactlessness and patronising tone of the whole thing. Honestly, is there no way to integrate your message into the film without sounding so ham-fisted and unrealistic (not to mention idiotic and paranoid)? I mean, none of the dialogue in this film sounds remotely like something I would expect a real person to say. It sounds like (and in fact is) Christian propaganda that's been lazily wrapped up in the flimsiest possible pretext (not unlike the non-sex scenes in a porn movie).

The story is silly beyond words, and is filled with glaring plot holes. Only the most forgiving viewer could get through this contrived and derivative mess without being bored or annoyed. Examples are too numerous to count, so let's just leave it at that.

This film is despicable from an intellectual standpoint, and incompetent as a work of cinema, but I must concede that I don't regret having watched it. It does occasionally succeed in being unintentionally entertaining.

In closing, there are two groups who might be able to get some enjoyment out of this film: those who have a taste for camp and kitsch, or, on the other hand, there are those who have a complete absence of critical skills, and won't notice what a total fiasco the whole thing is, and whose eyes won't roll at even the worst dialogue. If you fall into either of these two categories then it might possibly be worth a watch, but only if it's on the cheap and there's nothing else on. As for everybody else though, FOR THE LOVE OF ALLAH STAY AWAY FROM THIS MOVIE!

This is the third installment in the `Apocalypse' series. It seemed there was a little more money available for production. The acting was better in this movie of the series than the first two. That may be because there were real actors hired for this film. You do not need to have seen the previous movies to enjoy this movie. Though it would aid in understanding more about the supporting characters in this movie.

In this movie we follow police detective played by Gary Busey and his family. The timeline starts before the rapture where our detective ends up in a coma. He awakens two years later to a changed world where a self-proclaimed Messiah is ruling a world at peace. Well that is if you do not take into the account the resistance groups of Christians.

Busey's charter learns that millions have disappeared, including his sister, and no one seems to remember they ever existed. As he tries to figure out what is transpiring he searches for his family. He has trouble accomplishing daily task in his search as he learns you must have the mark of the beast in order to do or buy anything. And once again the Virtual Reality theme is back in this film. The best scene is actually at the end of the movie.