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[Image](2005) ***

Whew! Another series down. It's a little difficult writing about these Prophecy movies because they're not as absurdly loathsome as, say, the Leprechaun movies. Even when they get a little bit better it's all blandwich, really. This straight-to-video release came out a few months after Prophecy 4, and follows the continuing perils of Kari Wuhrer as Allison, guardian of The Lexicon. Like Ascent and Uprising, I granted this flick three stars, but this one falls between the two in mid-range, take-it-or-leave-it quality.

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This time the bad guy is played by the Candyman dude, as a renegade angel named Stark who wants to get his holy mitts on The Lexicon because it will reveal the anti-Christ by name, so then Stark can kill the little bastard and forestall Armageddon. "Don't you think Armageddon is one of the worst ideas God ever had?" he asks. Watching this, I thought "yes, yes I do."

The kicker is that the end of the world will boost Man up to God's favorite critters and leave the Angels as the only second most loved. The angels' hatred of the human "monkeys" for usurping God's favor has always been one of the selling points of The Prophecy series, but here it becomes pretty confused, as in order to accept the good guys' mission the viewer has to agree that Armageddon is good and healthy.

At least Stark has the smarts not to hire a blind hitman like that angel two movies ago. At his right hand is Dylan, a professional assassin who becomes even more Stark's bitch after a moment of remorse makes him shoot himself. Stark brings him back, as bad angels do, and uses Dylan's momentary glimpse of the afterlife awaiting suicides as leverage for Dylan to play further along. Pretty cool, but once again I thought "why not show us a glimpse of Hell already? Why not show us something else besides all these real-life looking sets and costumes and stuff? Come ahhhhn..."

Dylan turns out to have that hitman-with-a-heart-of-gold thing going on, as he blows his mission to kill Allison due to a last minute change of heart. She goes and visits Poor-man's Paul Rudd/Satan for help, but he points out that he's Satan and wants the Apocalypse to happen because he'll get a huge shipment of new souls. Eventually it comes down to a showdown on a rooftop with Stark, Dylan and Allison. Stark lets slip that Allison's a Nephalim (kid of an angel, can't die etc. -- this was all set up in movies #2 and 3) so Dylan shoots her a bunch of times with shots non-fatal to Nephalims. She goes plummeting off the roof and pages of The Lexicon are scattered all over the place, causing Stark to bellow in enraged defeat.

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Which is stupid, because the pages aren't burned or tipped into a wood chipper or anything, they're not even scattered that far. If the same thing happened to the cops they'd just call a bunch more cops and tell them to start picking up the pages lying all over the place, and Stark has a whole bunch of trenchcoated angels on the payroll who could do just that.

There's a few hints that that Joel Soisson, the writer/director of both Kari Prophecy flicks, intended this story to go further. For instance, at one point Dylan explains a bunch of "the rules" and they're different from the rules we've been sluggishly following so far. There are different ranks of angels (Thrones, Seraphs) and the kill shot for angels is no longer about ripping out hearts but instead about plugging them in the "third eye" spot on the forehead.

Also, as Stark whines on the roof we see a kid catch the last page of The Lexicon naming the anti-Christ, and then we hear his mother call his name -- and it's the same name, which means the anti-Christ is that kid. Ooooh. Meanwhile a bloodied but intact Allison opens her eyes and sees the beloved book she's been assigned by Heaven to safeguard fluttering all over the place, which means our hero completely failed in her task. And Armageddon's still on schedule anyway, which certainly sounds like more of this hoo-ha was being thunk up. Fortunately, no further Prophecy movies have surfaced and I can put this one to bed. Good night, little pack of blandwiches. Gracias por nada.

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