The Celestine Prophecy falls into the
new wave of religious-inspired or likewise themed texts that have done well on
the nonfiction charts over the past eight to 10 years — stretching back, not
surprisingly, to just before the dawn of the new millennium. Author Redfield
co-wrote and helped produce this much-anticipated film version of his novel,
according to press notes, in order to “preserve his vision of a time when all
races and religions will work together in harmony.” I wonder what that means
for the royalty checks…

The Celestine Prophecy
was initially self-published as a trade paperback in the fall of 1993, and sold
(and given away) chiefly through regional offerings in the South. Sensational
word-of-mouth prompted re-order after re-order, and Redfield and his wife Salle
had rung up more than 100,000 copies by the time Warner Books picked up the
reprint rights. Throughout the mid-’90s, the tome continued to captivate
readers, spending over three years on the New York Times bestsellers list; it has
since sold over 14 million copies in 45 languages. Like any sort of similar
grassroots phenomenon, its success speaks at least partially to our current
times as much as the content itself. The film, then — an earnest spiritual
adventure tale chronicling the discovery of ancient scrolls in the rainforests
of Peru — is
merely a lightly treading, formulaic recapitulation and regurgitation of the
mirrored themes present in the book.

Directed by Armand Mastroianni (who’s tread somewhat similar
thematic ground with the small screen’s Touched
by an Angel), the film features Matthew Settle (Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Until the Night), Thomas Kretschmann (above; Adrien Brody’s foil in Roman
Polanski’s The Pianist), Jurgen
Prochnow (The Da Vinci Code), ’80s
holdover Annabeth Gish (The West Wing)
and Hector Elizondo. The plot is kickstarted when middle school history teacher
John (Settle) is laid off. Left in a pretty inwardly reflective place and with
nothing better to do, John takes up Charleen (Robyn Cohen) on her offer for
spiritual soul-searching trip to South America, where he
ends up in the middle of a political power struggle involving a series of
ancient religious scrolls. The titular prophecy and its nine key insights predict
a worldwide awakening — arising within all religious traditions — that moves
humanity toward a deeper experience of spirituality. Naturally, some folks
don’t want this secret to get out.

The film version of The
Celestine Prophecy has been lauded with the Narrative Film Award from the
2006 Staten Island Film Festival and the Box Office Award from the 2006 Milan
Film Festival, as well as an Humanitarian Entertainment Award. As a spiritual
adventure film, though, it falls a little to the dewy right of the Left Behind series, which more credibly
mixes proselytizing and action. The proceedings are fairly staidly visually
captured, and some of the dialogue is leaden. Recognizable faces litter the
many supporting roles, but there are far too many leaps in logic for this streamlined
picture to work on its merits, without the enthusiastic belief of a watcher
driving its plot forward.

Presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen, The Celestine Prophecy comes with a Dolby
5.1 surround sound audio track. There’s no audio commentary track, alas, but the
DVD does contains a nice 25-minute behind-the-scenes featurette on the making
of the movie, in which cast members chat about the project and Redfield talks about turning down big Hollywood studio
offers (cough, cough… Dan Brown) in order to keep the movie’s message intact and
have a greater say in its creation. C- (Movie) B- (Disc)

2002’s Irreversible, which unfolded in reverse chronological order, and told the brutal story of a vengeful extraction of revenge in the wake of a rape and beating of the protagonist’s girlfriend (the smokin’ hot Monica Belluci, Cassel’s real-life wife). In fact, though, Cassel has been delivering quirky and wickedly subversive performances for years, in fare like The Messenger, The Crimson Rivers, Brotherhood of the Wolf and Read My Lips. (He also had a small but crucial role in Derailed, with Jennifer Aniston and Clive Owen.)

The ability to “do” wicked or wild rests easily with Cassel, in other words. So perhaps it’s not surprising, something as deliciously demented as the French redneck horror flick Sheitan, co-written and directed by Kim Chapiron, and produced by and starring Cassel. This is a guy who likes to go big, and this is a film that certainly provides ample opportunity for that.

Set on Christmas Eve, the story centers on a group of guys who meet two gorgeous girls who invite them to spend the weekend in the country. They accept, and there they meet creepy housekeeper Joseph (Cassel, displaying a cracked, dirty grin that would disgust even the most hygienically-challenged Brit), an unkempt man who keeps his pregnant wife hidden in the shadows of the large house. What begins innocently enough as Christmas dinner (mmm… goat!) gets turned upside down when conversation turns to sex, satanic possession and incest. Loopy eccentricity gives way to more sinister intent, and the young friends quickly realize that their host has made a perhaps too-literal pact with the devil, and all hell is about to break loose.

Mashing together horror and jet-black humor, Sheitan achieves its inbred creepiness, refreshingly, not through gore, but demented manipulation of image, stunted tone and audience expectation. Though not intricate or fully tricked out, the film is an imaginative art designer’s dream, commingling Dadaist instinct with considerably more grim set-ups (doll parts are strewn everywhere around Joseph’s workshop). Set against the high bar of Cassel’s manic, grade-A gnashing of scenery, the rest of the movie’s performances, unfortunately, are a bit uneven. We don’t get a firm grasp on other characters as more than functional pawns in the service of the narrative.

Sheitan benefits from a middling video transfer — colors are rich and consistent colors and there is very little grain, but the third act in particular suffers from digital blocking and some minor artifact issues. The DVD comes with Dolby digital 5.1 and DTS 5.1 French language audio tracks, plus the obligatory English subtitles. Apart from a trailer for the film other Tartan releases, the sole bonus feature contained herein is a discursive, 23-minute featurette. Billed as a “making of” documentary, this is true only in part, as Cassel sits for interview footage and we get a bit about the production crew, but footage from some of Kourtrajme’s short films is also folded into the proceedings in a less than smooth and graceful manner. Kudos to length, which trumps the bum’s rush a lot of foreign releases receive on the DVD format, but a bit more ironing out and mannered explication would have been nice. C (Movie) C+ (Disc)

The thirteenth and final episode of the first season of the “Masters
of Horror” anthology series, Fair Haired
Child stretches the boundaries of appellative generosity laid forth in the
compendium’s title. The hour-long piece is directed by William Malone (the
recent remake of The House on Haunted
Hill, and the exorable, awful FeardotCom),
and it doesn’t live up to many of its predecessors, certainly not
directorially.

Tank Girl’s Lori Petty) toss Tara into their
basement.

There, Tara happens upon a boy named
Johnny (Jesse Haddock) hanging from a noose. She cuts him free, but soon she
and Johnny come across signs and start hearing noises that indicate Anton and
Judith have done this sort of thing before, serving up virgin flesh to a horrifying
and depraved evil. Determined to battle a curse and learn the reason behind their
kidnapping, Johnny and Tara necessarily form a quick, special bond and band
together to fight the unrelenting terror of their night in their captors’
basement.

As with almost all of the “Masters of Horror” selections, the
series’ limited means sometimes shines through to the brief detriment of the
story. As penned, this actually isn’t a bad little horrific bon-bon, and some
of the effects work herein is actually pretty nice. The direction, though, is
slapdash and uninspired, and Malone constructs scenes (and elicits performances)
that are tonally incongruous. The project fancies itself a sort of foreboding anti-fairy tale, but the more twisted passages of Running Scared actually work much better in this regard.

Presented in 1.77:1 widescreen, enhanced for 16×9 televisions,
Fair Haired Child comes with Dolby
digital 2.0 and Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio tracks. Perhaps the best
news is that, as with other titles in the “Masters of Horror” series, the DVD
release possesses an impressive slate of bonus material — over three hours’ worth
— to complement its hour-long feature. In addition to on-set interviews with Lindsay
Pulsipher, Lori Petty, Jesse Haddock and William Samples, there’s a nine-minute
behind-the-scenes, making-of featurette, a separate 25-minute, laudatory/retrospective
featurette on Malone himself (one notable claim to fame is that he created the
mask used in the original Halloween) and
additional interview material with the filmmaker. An audio commentary track with
Malone and writer Matt Greenberg (Halloween
H20, and the sequel to The Prophecy)
dissects the creation of the film in anecdotal fashion. Finally, trailers, a
Malone text biography, a scene from his first short film, a Fair Haired Child still photo gallery
and DVD-ROM inclusions of a screensaver and a copy of the movie’s teleplay
round things out. C- (Movie) A- (Disc)