Hundreds of years ago, a group of Teutonic knights confront a woman who's been accused of witchcraft. At first, they're all "WWJD?", then, after a few seconds of deliberation, they decide to slaughter everybody in the entire village. Women, men, children...even the animals! After spreading the message of Christ, they bury the bodies in a large pit and construct a church on the site to prevent the vengeful spirits of the villagers from returning. That works out pretty well, up until the 1980's when some construction workers uncover the seal that's holding back the demons. Not to worry though, because the quick-thinking priests immediately cover the seal back up and everybody lives happily ever after. Yay! The End.
Nope. Just like in a million other horror films, our heroes simply leave the extremely dangerous object completely unprotected until somebody stupid wanders over and fucks with it. After the seal is broken, the evil spirits explode out at a snail's pace to leisurely go about the business of possessing a few people and getting crazy. You'd think that after being locked up for seven-, eight-, whatever-hundred years, the demons would be excited as Hell to get out, but no, they take their sweet time. Maybe they're just gaining strength or haven't had their morning cup of coffee yet. Whatever the excuse is, they don't do nearly as much as I had hoped for. No...seeing a demon wash out a kid's mouth with soap is not my idea of excitement.
Jackhammer suicide, neck stabbing, demon fucking, lots of talking, typewriter button smashing, good music, cool looking filming locations, solid direction, mild violence, very mild nudity, slow pace that never pays off, totally badass demon costume that's onscreen for like 10 seconds total. I like the idea of THE CHURCH, but it simply didn't live up to what I had pictured in my handsome brain. For some odd reason, I was picturing a bunch of innocent tourists getting trapped in an European cathedral (THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL-style) and then being tormented by demons! That would have been awesome!!! Instead, things were just kind of...meh.
THE CHURCH is worth checking out, but it could have been way better. I'd love to see a remake featuring Morbid Angel's classic "Chapel of Ghouls".
