THE SEVENTH SIGN Blu-ray Review – High Stakes, No Tension
Pat King
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Starring Demi Moore, Michael Biehn, Jürgen Prochnow
Directed by Carl Schultz
Distributed by Scream Factory
The Seventh Sign is a fun popcorn movie written by people who thought they were making high art. Director Carl Schultz knew what the deal was, though, and made a serviceable horror -thriller that’s fun despite the pseudo-heavy religious undertones.
Abby (Demi Moore) is having a difficult pregnancy. Though it’s kind of glossed over, she’s had some problems conceiving or going full term in the past. This troubled pregnancy might be her last chance to have a baby. And, oh yeah, the birth of her baby might trigger the end of the world. While this is going on, a guy named David Bannon (Jürgen Prochnow) is causing all sorts of havoc in various locations around the world. You know, the kind of havoc that involves biblical apocalypse prophecies. Finally, as one does, he arrives in America, where he rents a studio apartment on Abby’s property. Meanwhile, Abby’s husband Russell (Michael Biehn) is a lawyer trying to keep a very religious young man with Down Syndrome from facing the gas chamber. The twenty-something young man was quite upset when he found out that his parents were brother and sister. (I guess this is supposed to account for the Down Syndrome, though that’s not really how it works.) As you might suspect, these two storylines merge by the end of the film. It’s awkward and forced, sure, but they both definitely intersect with each other.
The Seventh Sign is far more conventional than it wants to be, and it owes a lot to far better films that came before it like The Omen. On a technical level, it’s perfectly middle-of-the-road. No big risks taken. Schultz doesn’t do a whole lot with the camera, and he doesn’t seem too interested in directing the actors’ performances, either. I have to say, though, there are some quite beautiful moments in the cinematography by Juan Ruiz Anchía where he bathes the characters in a silky white light emanating from a single window. He does this several times in different locations throughout the film, and it’s really fascinating to watch.
The main problem here is the story. Despite technically being a thriller, there’s not a whole lot of tension. I think a lot of this is due to being able to predict the ending pretty easily once the film gets going. I mean, the stakes are technically as big as they can be, the fate of the world being at stake and all. But it doesn’t feel that way, even when hail starts raining down on Los Angeles on a sunny day. On the plus side, the film is never boring. In fact, I found that the 97-minute runtime went by quickly. Besides that, though, the movie really isn’t too memorable. The best word to sum up pretty much every aspect of the production is “adequate.”
Take the acting, for example. Demi Moore’s performance is fine, though it would have been nice if Schultz had her dial back the melodrama in certain places. Michael Biehn, best known as Kyle Reese from the original Terminator film, is a personality vacuum that could have easily been replaced by a pair of socks. He does seem to deliver all of his lines in the correct order, so at least there’s that. Jürgen Prochnow is a wonderful character actor, and I was happy to see that he was in this. I’ll always remember him for his wonderful performance as Sutter Cane in John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness. He does the best he can with the material he’s given, which isn’t much. His job is mostly to stand around and look creepy, which he does quite well.
There are some interesting ideas here and there. Like quite a few 80’s horror movies, The Seventh Sign has a lot to say about the closed-off nature of suburban America during that time. The world is literally ending around Abby, but all that only exists as background noise on the TV news. The apocalypse doesn’t affect her until she experiences part of it personally. It’s a pretty cool concept to explore, but it’s one of many ideas that are far from fully formed.
Besides TV spots, the special features on this Scream Factory Blu-ray release consist of interviews with some of the cast and crew. For me, the most interesting of these interviews is with screenwriters “George Kaplan” and “W.W. Wicket,” who were actually the husband and wife team of Clifford and Ellen Green. They wanted to distance themselves from the film by taking their names off of it. They didn’t like some of the changes made to the structure of their story, but their main complaint is the casting of Demi Moore, who was 25 at the time, as the film’s lead. The character they’d written was in her late 30’s or early 40’s, a woman who had a long history of difficult pregnancies that didn’t carry to term, and this was her last chance to have a baby. While I definitely agree that this would probably have made for a more interesting story, film economics, especially in the 80’s, demanded a young, conventionally attractive woman as a main character. And since Abby is the only female character of any consequence, it’s not a surprise that the producers and director wanted to go with Moore, a rising star who had already starred in St. Elmo’s Fire and About Last Night. Though that decision sucks, such is the lot for screenwriters who don’t direct. A good amount of control is ceded to others.
Besides, it’s hard to say whether that chance would have helped the movie much. Probably not. The story isn’t compelling, and its ideas aren’t fully formed. I just can’t see an older Abby changing any of that.
Special Features:
- Interview With Actor Michael Biehn
- Interview With Director Carl Schultz
- Interview With Actor Peter Friedman
- Interview With Actor John Taylor
- Interviews With Screenwriters Clifford And Ellen Green
- TV Spots
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The Seventh Sign
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Special Features
Summary
A serviceable apocalyptic horror-thriller that’s worth checking out only if you like this subgenre and have some extra time on your hands.
Categorized:Reviews
