Rating: 3.5/5
Hooptober 6.0 | 24/32 | The men and women of the church are having a bad day
The Teutonic Knights wipe out a village they suspect has a witch. That is, except for one girl, who manages to hide away. The knights throw the bodies into a pit, filling it with dirt and building a church over the pit to trap the demon in the ground.
Cut to the present day, where Evan starts his new job at the church as a librarian. The church is undergoing a restoration project that includes revitalizing the frescos and renovating the crumbling catacombs beneath the church.
Lisa, the artist supervising the restoration, discovers beneath a fresco an encrypted document. She shows the document to Evan, and the two work to understand it and uncover the secrets buried beneath the church.
The movie is fully aware of the link between the Teutonic Order and the Nazis. For example, they modeled the SS iron cross after the Order’s insignia.
Evan’s desires are similar to Hitler’s in that he’s fixated on the idea of a sacred relic that makes him more powerful. I have no idea why these are a church librarian’s ambitions, but whatever.
The movie has plenty of great images — demons, costumes, and statues. A significant problem is that the film has no narrative momentum, so we wait to see what happens.
The third act ramps up the kooky. It needed to get weird enough… and by the end, it did!
I’m probably overrating this, but I needed this unhinged creature in my life.