I Watch Films: The Seventh Sign

 

The Seventh Sign

There are signs of the apocalypse, and a Catholic priest (Peter Friedman) is looking into them. Meanwhile in Los Angeles pregnant Abby Quinn (Demi Moore) rents the garage apartment to a mysterious stranger (Jürgen Prochnow). Her lawyer husband (Michael Biehn) is trying to prevent his client, a disabled man who killed his incestuous parents in the name of god, from being executed.

The mysterious stranger has ancient documents that are sealed* shut. Paranoid, Abby finds one that that seems to have the expected date of her baby’s birth. She tries to get it translated, eventually finding a Jewish man. The film inelegantly skates over the theological implications to instead talk about the “Guf,” the chamber of souls, which is emptying, so there isn’t one for her child. This, the birth of a soulless child, will be the seventh sign of the apocalypse (after an eclipse and the death of a martyr, the whole things coming together into a climax).

All this is competent without quite becoming compelling. It was made at the moment when Michael Biehn was looking to breakout and become a big star (which he never quite managed) and so was Demi Moore (which she did, but not until Ghost in a couple of years time). A curiousity that occasionally delves into the true horror of obscure theology, sacrifice and eternal punishment.

Watch This: Some fun apocalypse from the late eighties
Don’t Watch This: There’s some very creepy pregnancy paranoia going on

* It’s a pity – for this film – that there already exists a very famous and brilliant Ingmar Bergman film with the title The Seventh Seal