Story
When an exorcism goes wrong, a priest must seek a young man’s help to stop the upcoming End of Days. Together they must put aside their differences in order to not only destroy the rising demon population but also to seek out those who wish to resurrect Beelzebub. Can they achieve their goals in time or will time run out?
Review
There are two reasons that I decided to rent this movie. The first reason is that the cover looked freaking amazing with its contortion and makeup. The second reason was the fact that Danny Trejo (one of my favorite actors) is listed as one of the characters. It didn’t occur to me until later that Danny Trejo was probably going to be a minor character whose name was used to sell the movie. Unfortunately this turned out to be the case. More on that down the line.
So looking back at the storyline, I must ask this to my readers; does the plot sound familiar? Well if you’ve seen any kind of Religious-Action movie in the past ten years, I am sure that your answer to this question is yes. That is the biggest issue plaguing The Cloth – that is has been done before, and better, by dozens of other movies. It almost seems like a combination of movies like Van Helsing, Constantine, and John Carpenter’s Vampires.
The movie seems to have been given a general outline of how these kinds of movies are supposed to be done. The creators then take this outline and refuse to add any of their own flair to make The Cloth stand out among the crowd. You have the elderly character who takes on a young, but troubled, ward that, SURPRISE, doesn’t like the elderly priest and is constantly arguing with him. Then you have the character with an accent that makes all the very kick-ass weapons specially designed to slaughter demons. You have the pretty girl who before meeting the young man kept a very sheltered, quiet life researching the occult for the order of kick-ass priests, and then you have the villain who doesn’t do much until the final fight scene.
To compound the negativity, the movie utilizes some atrocious computer effects. I must state that this movie is rather low budget so bad animation is to be expected but the fact is that this movie uses too much CGI. There are several scenes (such as a pumpkin exploding or dropping a coin in a cup of water) that did not need to be computer animated and yet they were. The over-use of this bad animation kept ripping my attention from the movie itself because of the lousy quality.
Those negatives being said; the movie is actually not bad. While it is very generic and the animation horrid; he movie itself is passable. I really enjoyed the weapons and with those the action sequences. While this movie may not be the next 300 in terms of action, it does a decent job. I really enjoyed seeing the demons exploding into ash as those were one of the few moments where the CGI was well done.
The makeup is also very good. Several of the one-shot demons have very basic make-up applied to them but there are others that have been transformed into full demons or have been possessed. Those individuals look amazing. Cracked skin, blackened teeth and nails, blood and grime; all your typical possession flair is there and it is done beautifully. My absolute favorite effect was in the beginning where a possessed girl contorts herself in almost disgusting ways. The reason this was my favorite was because they used a real contortionist to make it more realistic. It was an effect that worked very well.
The Cloth is not a terrible movie but it isn’t a great one either. This is one of those movies where you feel rather nonchalant by the time the movie ends. There are no real high moments but at the same time there are no painfully bad ones either. I don’t regret seeing the film though I would be hard pressed to recommend it to others unless you are curious.