SPOOPYWEEN DAY 20 DELIVER US!!!

Day 20

Deliver Us

It’s about that time, we dipped our toes back into the forever giving pool of religion spookiness.

Or not, I don’t know. I just pulled this one at random and thought HEY, that’s an interesting poster. Naked lady ice bathing in a snowy cross. Sure why not.

God I’m so simple sometimes.

Anyway…

This is another new horror, it sounded like it could be……….something. I don’t want to say good because, well. Vudu likes to warn you about making purchases. Which bless their hearts for thinking it’d stop me from wasting my time let alone money. But at the same time its warnings turn out to often be prophecies. The film score for this movie is. Oh so promising of a good time. In that everyone jointly agrees it is horrible. So we can hope they mean the GOOD kind of horrible.

I mean really. How bad can a film be about a nun who conceives a miracle Christ baby out of the blue. Right? Not like we’d have a contender for a new comic gold film to dethrone Pray For the Devil…god what if though.

Well let’s find out as we enter our 20th day, and upon this day. We shall see what random selection and new films brings us. Time to dive on in so. Grab your rosary and some whiskey. It’s go time baby!

The Film

Well today was not the day for naked tattoo club to have their meeting, apparently. Either a cult of people were just sacrificed and their fleshy tattoos peeled from their bodies and binded into the coolest book of all time, or a game of Dungeons and Dragons went horribly, horrifyingly wrong the moment someone made mushroom tea with a tablesoon of mad honey.

It’s always a fun way to begin your film when you decide to behead the clergy one after the other before skinning their tattoo’d backs trying to piece together a story. It’s also incredibly Russian. Somehow. Which is where this film begins. It’s the beginning of a long gruesome road ahead of us, as these fleshy backs seem to suggest a pretty nifty story. We aren’t told this story naturally. But you can see from a few choice glimpses, that it includes a woman banging an ox. Serpents, sacrifices. Naked dancers, bird people, and for some reason Elmo from Sesame Street.

But that’s not really that important right now. Nor is the fact these fleshy ink backs are being bound into a flesh book like the Necronomicon. What is interesting however, is that a quiet coven of nuns is having one hell of a night. A not so popular nun, because she keeps a mirror in her bedroom which means she’s obviously vein. Is having nightmares. Which wake her from her sleep and give her incredibly painful tummy aches. They also give her Stigmata  of all things, and instead of gas from a steady diet of bread, wine and borsch. She is given an immaculate conception.

Russia, am I right?

So this is the lady of our story, sister Yulia.

The Vatican has this girl locked up and are sending their top priestly men to deal with it. Which includes Father Fox, a priest who found a lady he liked enough to get naked with and hold hands. They are in love and she is carrying his baby. So he’s on his way out of the priesthood, after many years serving as a priest and performing exorcisms for the church.

This is the back story we are fed very quickly about him. It’s not just bbe shortening it this time. It’s really just sort of thrown out there for us. He doesn’t want to investigate this woman, but everyone, including his prego wife-to-be wants him to.

Why is he investigating her? Well you’d think the immaculate conception would be reason enough right? No. That’s just an everything no big to do. The reason she is to be investigated, and is kept under lock and key. Is because, well. She’s not just pregnant. She’s super pregnant. Double pregnant.

It’s a fun way to say, she’s got twins. So being superstitious as the church is. They all believe she is carrying a good and evil baby inside her womb. So yeah. She’s carrying the new savior 2.0, and  the antichrist DLC.

Religion is really funny when you look into it, and this is just further proof they like to have fun.

So Father Fox takes a train to the covenant of immaculate twins and reads up about the nun in question. It is here we are introduces to the main players. Which include a priest on his way to becoming the next Pope of Amazing Godliness, and also a one eyed man whom we saw in the beginning who was binding flesh books for a weekly project.

This movie likes to move along briskly. But it also doesn’t seem content to explain itself. Things simply seem to happen, because god wills it.

Rather the script writers will it.

For example.

There is the start of a story here. There really is. But the film is happening in a series of quick time events. Like someone is actively hitting spacebar during conversations to skip until the game ask us to make a choice.

Father Fox arrives. Meets with a powerful priest on his way to popehood, in the same instance he is also introduced as I said to the evil one eyed man. No one questions who these two are or why they are present. We then fast forward to Fox having his first meeting with Yulia. Which is done with a divider between them. For reasons. Apparently pregnant virgin nuns are as dangerous as Hannibal. The meeting is incredibly short. She greets him and he ask her curiously, how long she’s spoken English. She tells him she only recently began speaking English once she became pregnant, which she believes happened so she could talk to him. This would be an interesting point to dig into. But someone is hammering that space bar, so the conversation is ended and Fox is being lead around the convent.

He then meets up with the red robed pope-alicious priest. Who then shows him photocopies of….the flesh book…which Fox ask him “What material were these things printed on?”, A good and fair question. Which red robe man ignores. In fact the film just ignores.

It’s pretty hilarious actually but it isn’t done for our benefit unfortunately. It’s just a quick ‘who can you trust’ type play. The only thing we get out of it, is…….well what we already were told by the Vatican priest boss. Only this time, we learn the same information from the flesh book. Which is a Zoroastrian prophecy about a virgin giving birth to twins. One good the other evil.  Shockingly the anti-christ and the jesus. Both will be born and learn to love one another, or kill the other.

HOW

EVER….

Father Foxpants, tells us “I don’t think this says the nun will be a virgin. I think it says god will be born FROM a virgin birth, but the antichrist can only be conceived through evil penetration, which she has to willingly accept”

Which. Of course. Obviously. That’s how it works.

Also this movie is basically an independent retelling of Citizen Toxie.

That was the plot to the 4th Toxic Avenger movie. I’m not joking. Toxie’s wife was pregnant with two babies. She had sweet sex with Melvin, and got boinked by evil Melvin, but also Sgt Kabukiman NYPD. Which resulted in a good and evil toxie baby in her belly. Which fought in her womb with mops until the good Toxie one and was born to help save the world.

So yes basically this is a Troma film.

This is also just 20 minutes into an hour and forty minute movie. Buckle up buckaroos.

Basically, as long as virgin mama Yulia doesn’t go fuckin the devil or tickling goat balls. She should be cool. I mean she had a Christ baby with the touch of Jesus to the belly Stigmata so far. So yeah. Tell the Devil to go jerk one out and your not in the mood, and the world will be saved.

This is also just fucking stupid.

I mean come on now. So she magically is prego with two babies. But Jesus got to the Uterus first and planted the golden child. So what the second kid is just on stand by and good also? Like we could have two holy roller good savior babies? That’s what the film is telling us. Because until she lets the devil nut in her baby maker. Which is already full. Then those babies remain pure. But the moment he pickles his cucumber. Then we have an antichrist. This….this is fucking stupid.

Just surround her with women, read the good book, watch some Wizard of Oz and deliver the ultra Jesus twins.

You are literally putting a ticking clock on her vagina. For the devil to tickle the babies feet, therefore fulfilling the prophecy of good and evil babies.

Why not you know…just have them both already be good and evil? I mean at the same time, if this movie wants to get really fucking crazy and have her wear a holy chastity belt and have women pray over her vulva. Hey lets do it, I’m here for it. Go full tits out man.

But WOW how much easier would this all be if you just shoved the two in her oven and see which one fully develops first.

For now that’s a problem for another day. Apparently.

Because this film wants to hurry itself along before we can make sense of things. So this means no asking questions like. How did the priest get photocopies of the skin book pages. Like how did that go down anyway? Did someone visit a Russian Kinkos and begin slapping slabs of flesh down and paying for copies? Where did this prophecy come from, when will the devil attack her? Doesn’t matter.

The one eyes man is moving to try and induce an abortion. He and another man are readying to inject Yulia with anti baby medication. However their plans are thwarted when Father Foxypants stumbles upon them. But remains unseen.

That is until he goes roaming around the convent and stumbles upon the cult room where one eyed man and other cultist are hanging out, sacrificing a goat and having a generally good evening. Unfortunately this time Foxpants is spotted and cut with a Nazgul blade.

A chase ensues, red robes and foxpants are racing to get Yulia into a truck and out of the convent. Which would work. If not for the fact Foxpants let red robe drive them, apparently he isn’t used to driving himself as he tries ramming their truck into a solid iron gate. Which to no one but red robes surprise, does not break down and allow them to escape.

So they decide to travel on foot in the snow. While being shot at by the one eyed man with a pistol. This sounds like it would be hugely exciting and action packed. It is not. There is no tension. This is just. Sort of happening. And everything that should be treated with an edge of your seat ‘did they or didn’t they make it’, is just a casual “Oh they aren’t there anymore. Oops they were shot at, but they’re fine. Oh look they found another car, wait another car in the middle of nowhere? Huh, okay then’

Things are happening because the movie wants them to happen, but there is no real motive behind them happening, past gods will and the script.

I don’t think this film is going to be a comedy. It’s just going to be bad.

I mean this is…this is just bad.

I’m not summarizing things poorly, or quickly mind you. This is actually how things are happening and playing out. Which I mean. It makes my job feel easier. Like I am a court reporter really. But at the same time. When your film plays out like listening to a student in your class give a presentation they obviously copied from a wiki and had ai finish for them. Its going to put you to sleep. And I am starting to feel tired.

So with the convent out of our hair. We are moving on to the next step in the film. Which is just a special kind of, something.

Our three characters make their escape to a train station and away from danger. Father Foxpants calls his wife to be Laura, and ask for her help. So she directs them to a cabin they can stay at in the middle of the forest, in the snow.

To add to this. Sister Yulia gives birth to these twins. Don’t ask. Just go with it.

Naturally as these twins are the future of the world. Good and Evil. We need to differentiate the two. So one gets wrapped in charcoal grey, the other in savior beige.

We begin two not really interesting plot points now.

One, is the will they wont they tension between Yulia and Foxpants. The other, which really needed explaining but we know that wont happen. Is Father Red Robes is super happy living out in their forest AirBnB. And tells the two, about a prophecy, multiple prophecies. Concerning the two of them. He tells Father Foxpants “You will die a priest….but. Be reborn the father of twins. Nothing is set in stone, there is no fate but what we make. It all depends what you and Yulia do bro. The world is yours for you two to destroy or build so. Have fun with that and explaining it to your wife to be.”

Oh and father Red Robe learned this, and told them these prophecies. Not from the photocopies of the flesh book. Not from translated text from the flesh book. But directly from the flesh book.

He has the flesh book now. By the way.

How? Don’t know.

Is anyone surprised? No.

Does Father Foxy tight pants ask ‘hey uh….is this inked skin?’ No. He just listens about getting the chance to fuck a single mother for the good of the world.

But who cares about explaining things when they should just be allowed to happen, also lets get fuckin!

Yes, there is a full frontal balls mashing into ass sex scene in the movie.

Which if you expect this to make sense in the film, like say. You know. How she has to accept the devil willingly into her magic wizards sleeve for the baby to be evil? No such luck. Instead we get some independent cinema shit.

A dream fuck.

Father Foxy is dreaming of giving daily mass to Yulia. While Yulia is baring her ass for mass.

She is covered in scripture inked all over, butt naked and honking the fathers trumpet like Gabriel. The two begin some down right dream fucking, and during said dream fuck, the father is asleep, looking slightly conflicted, but enjoying being ridden like a roman horse. While our new mother of two has a look on her face that says, someone found the little man in the boat, and there’s a boat bumping into the dock.

The next. Morning….

Father Fox is greeted to a delicious home cooked meal prepared by Yulia, he is suffering from post dream nut, and can’t really look her in the face given he saw himself banging and cheek slapping not his wife.

Yulia on the other hand is blushing, smiling and enjoying every inch of last nights dream. To a point she tells the father how, the babies use dreams to communicate to them, and what they want. Which is for them to be a family.

So let that process and stew a bit, yes?

Her good and evil babies. Well conduit babies. Invaded their dreams, and made them straight up fuck. Like there was no sex, no love making. These two straight up had a hunger and they fucked. The babies. Made them fuck. As their way of saying ‘Y’all need to be our momo and pop pop”

So she walks off leaving Father Fox to think about that, and enjoy his breakfast.

BUT

BEFORE WE CAN LET THAT SINK IN

Seriously, this movie doesn’t want any of this to linger. It just wants it to happen, and us to think about it. At least until we are introduced to the one eyed man seeking our Father Fox’s wife. Which he does. He finds her home, kills her cleaning lady and watches her and Father Fox arrive to gather some clothes. Then….does nothing. Just hangs out, eats and walks off.

Apparently he knows where the cabin is, either the cleaning lady told him, or gods will sent him there.

Eitherway, he finds the cabin, sort of. He also finds Cardinal Red Robes, and…ask him to help him ‘kill the child’ or he’ll let evil forest wolves devour him. Red Robes picks death and the wolves eat him. So you would think. This happening now, at night. Near the cabin. This would directly put Yulia and her babies at risk? Especially with Foxpants and his wife to be elsewhere.

That would logically make sense.

But not here. God and the script wont allow it.

Instead we should check in with Father Foxpants and his wife to be. See she is the head of a construction group which is also treating the towns water supply. Or something. And the town is mad. Mad because the water is poisoned they claim. So she is headed to the factory. Late at night. With two guards, to confront a mob of 20 towns people. You can see where this is going.

The crowd is exceptionally violent and mad. Father Fox says ‘hey babe, uh. Maybe we should go home.’, she tells him to cool it, that she knows these people and it’s all good.

One of the people shoots her in her pregnant belly and now. Father Foxpants is BACK ON THE MARKET!

Just like that. His wife and kid are gone. So he has no hang ups about holding out for the woman he loves, he is free to father and bang sister mother Yulia and be father to the destroyer or the creator.

BUT

AGAIN

BEFORE

WE CAN LET

THAT SINK IN

Oh this gets fucking dumb, and puzzling.

Let me set the scene before we go any further.

Father Fox is in the hospital in town where his wife was pronounced dead with their baby ala gun shot.

Yulia is alone with her children at the cabin

Cardinal Red Robes is in the woods devoured by wolves.

Father one eye has walked off to the cabin. Armed with a pistol. He has found the babies. Ready to shoot ‘the bad one’, whichever one that is. He can’t decide which is which. But as he tries to decide this, Yulia stabs him with a knife. He doesn’t like that and knocks her to the floor. Ready to play which baby is the bad baby. But before he can make that decision. Father Foxpants begins fighting him. Ultimately killing him.

And Yulia has visions of her dead naked father. Which she then realizes he wasn’t apparently crazy. Just abusive, and that all the paintings he spent his life making. Were all prophecies of what was to come. Like her giving birth. Laura dying. Their two kids needing a father and destroying or saving the world. The ending to the sixth sense, Who shot JFK. And I shit you not an actual wood painting of an ultrasound showing Fox’s unborn baby.

How did Fox get there from the city so fast? Don’t know.

How did he and Yulia end up back together to discover dead red robes? Dunno.

The will of god and the screenwriters.

So the last few minutes of the film. I’ll spare you and give the fastest run down because trust me. It’s best to move faster than the movie does. Which is already insanely fast.

The repeating theme through most of this has been about the good and evil babies and how people believe one child will kill the other. But the real threat and question of threat. Is not the babies killing each other. But the people around them killing others. Its suggested the devil will try and use people to kill the other child OR. Set man against man. In this case though. It’s father Fox against Mama Yulia.

So yes. We end the film on a trope and a prophecy. Father Fox is succumbing to the temptations of evil. Because the man lost his wife and baby, is being forced into the role of sugar daddy to take care of two kids that aren’t his, and support a single mother. So he needs an out.

Meanwhile Sister Mother Yulia, must protect her children from him. Because she has figured everything out.

Thanks to the paintings her father made of her fucking the priest, and the dead peoples skin also detailing this, and the rest of the film. She has understood that. Even though it is prophecy, that one child will save the world, while the other will destroy man. It is not for them to decide which child to destroy. But to love and nurture both children. That the responsibility. The fate of the world, rest squarely on all of us. To love and accept both children equally.

So as long as we are cool with Satan’s kid, and God’s second son. We can live in peace.

Well Father Fox says nuts to that. He grabs a baby, proclaiming it the bad one, and is ready to throw that lil bastard over a cliff. Until he remembers how good the dream sex was, and thinks maybe I shouldn’t toss a god child over the cliff. Maybe I should try loving.

So he turns around and is ready not to kill the baby. However Yulia isn’t taking any chances, and she shoots him dead. Collecting her baby as loot and cradling the dead father.

WHO IF YOU REMEMBER!!!

Was foretold would die a priest, but be reborn as a father of twins.

So basically he dies, and god laughs telling him he’s not getting out of this that easily, not for 18 years, and with the magic of DCS and their power of child support obligations, Fox is brought back, and ready to be a father now. Since he died and saw the error of his ways.

We get a voice over from Yulia about the fate of the world being in our hands, and how cool it is having a man in her life raising her sons and the world being semi damned but able to save itself if we all just stop being hateful pricks.

Also there is a shit ton more nudity. Just because they could. And they did.

Lots, and lots of dicks.

The End.

So this was a bummer. Not on so many levels, but more as a whole.

Like, I can’t say its entirely the script, or the direction. It has nothing to do with budget or production.

It’s a bit of the first two really, and just being an odd movie over all. Really.

Which isn’t always a bad thing. There are good odd movies, and bad ones. This one wasn’t really bad so much as it was just boring.

I joked about it a lot, but the film really did just never mind so many plot elements and moments in the film. It wasn’t a very narrative driven film, so much as it was a series of random events, which were meant to provoke reaction, flash provocative imagery, but not tell the story to us. So much as have us watch and unfurl the tapestry of the fleshy book movie.

Which is a nice way of saying this film was experimental trash and fuck this garbage.

You can set up all the mood and atmosphere as a Denny’s in Southern California, but it’s still just part of a chain, and a shit one at that.

The movie promises a horror story, something you would think to being akin too The Omen. A story of good or evil triumphant over the other. Testing of faith and the acceptance of the supernatural. What you get is a film that drops you directionless into a crack house, and each time you think you figured out where you are. They black bag you and put you in a different room in the same house, and repeat this several times until you end up in a well lit room surrounded by old men wearing animal mask who tell you that all of this was a test to see if you understood that life is less about understanding and having the answers given to us, and more about experiencing and meditating on how it made you feel while you watched it.

So again. Bullshit.

There were promising moments in this, but that’s all the film really amounted to. Promising moments. Moments which were used by the director to show us dread and terror. But with no cause or substance. Simply it was a part of this chaotic world we live in and these are the actions within.

Father Fox was shown to us as a father who was leaving the priesthood to become a father to his child, and a husband. That could have been explored further through the film. But that was not the focus. It is a dab of character, before we are thrust face first into the stanky bush of artistic vision and told look at the chaos and horror, does it not frighten you?

When in fact we are more just wanting them to stop rubbing their stanky bush in our faces and just let us get into the moment.

If the film had focused on being a bit more of a film with a story. It might’ve worked better. In stead it tried making itself to be a think piece, and something you’ll feel better having enjoyed, if you use big words and express how creepy you found the images to be, versus the story. Which was never the point to begin with. Because fuck traditional movie standards and fuck horror films following a formula.

Some amount of explaining would have been nice. In fact it would have really helped a lot.

In fact the film just, throws things at you, at random, with scant little dashes of answers, or they skip the explanation and back story, only to just have a character bring up something as fact, like you walked out of a play and came back now having to play catchup. Only you never left. You also never fell asleep and missed the scene where they discover the flesh books. They just suddenly have them. You didn’t miss the part where they tell you the cult that is actively trying to kill the babies. Yulia and Red Robes just casually mentions them by name.

The prophecies weren’t translated from the flesh books, they were just half handedly discussed as something existing in text books.

When you are expecting a film to tell you a story, and not just a series of images for you to decipher the meaning of. You have to be in the mood for it, or made ready for it. If I knew this would be an independent cinema lets talk about the horror of man film. I would still hate it, because even in that regard it was boring. But I would’ve been more readily accepting of what was happening.

Think of it as going over to a friends house for horror movie night, You talked about some slashers, and classics, as well as terrible funny movies. So you grab a drink, your friend pops in a film, and it’s ‘The Witch’

A good film, yes. But you gotta be told up front what you are getting into. Otherwise get ready for a long ride ahead.

The acting, for what there was, was okay. The sets were nice, and the effects were decent. The music was mostly bland and faded off into the background. Which is fine, it wasn’t the center of the film or driving it anywhere. It served its purpose.

There is. One thing though. In this film I will praise.

It’s a very small thing, and I could be looking a little too deep into it. Maybe it was intentional, maybe it wasn’t. Part of me feels it was. But I can’t say.

But during one scene. At the train station. Once they arrive and are waiting around outside. You hear very distinctly. What might at first sound like crossing bells, or a train alert. But that’s not what it is.

I kid you not, and I swear on a stack of bubble gum. The sound they used, and faintly fades off into the background. Is the sound of hammers hitting molten metal, from the opening scene of The Exorcist, where the three blacksmith are hammering out a piece of metal.

I have seen The Exorcist so many countless times. The original, Directors cut, and Television version. Multiple times. I know this sound by heart. That is the sound this film used. Clang CLANG clang CLANG clang CLANG.

I would not at all be surprised if they did use that on purpose in the film, working it into that scene. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised. If I am wrong though, I still enjoyed it because it reminded me of a movie I need to watch again. But I BET they did it on purpose.

I really don’t want to be that harsh on the film. But it really is a bit difficult. As the type of film it was meant to be? It didn’t really work. As a horror film? It was meh. It just needed something more.

Like all the pieces were there, but still something was missing from it. Like when I make my famous red beans and rice. I’ve made it so many times I don’t need to look at the recipe. But even then. Using the exact ingredients, never changing the seasonings. There are still times when I make it and eat it. That It just seems to be missing something. Like that extra little bit of flavor you look forward to while making it, is just not there like it should be. It’s so faint that its barely there. But you can’t finger what that ingredient is, that’s missing from it.

That was this film. It wasn’t so boring as to be bad. It was just not engaging enough to be boring, and that feeling of ‘did I miss something’ while watching it, wondering if you did zone out, but knowing you didn’t. That doesn’t help it either.

So, that being said. Pray for The Devil is still the best horror comedy next to Malignant. And this movie was no contender. But might make for an interesting time filler if you light up a joint and just go with it.

That being said, I can’t think of anything more to say about the film. Because well. There just isn’t much else to add honestly. So on that note, until tomorrow dear readers. If you have dreams of hot ball slapping, cheek pancaking sex with someone you just introduced to your partner and friends? I strongly advice you not to tell your partner about it, and how you need to become their sugar daddy, because the prophecy said so. Trust me it won’t work as well as you think. GOODNIGHT!