GENESIS 1:27 states that God made man “in his own image”, and if director Michael Peterson’s latest horror film is anything to go by, that’s not necessarily a good thing.
According to the Bible, God killed 2,391,421 people, and Satan only 10, so is it at all possible, the film asks, that we might be following the wrong guy?
Shadow of God, which is now streaming on Shudder, certainly considers this possibility, and paints the Almighty as a wrathful and unforgiving power.
Turning the exorcist genre completely on its head, Peterson offers us something a little different despite the presence of all your quintessential demonic possession tropes. And regardless of its clever twist, Shadow of God feels like an exorcism film so over the top and ridiculous that it surely came from the pen of Dan Brown.
The film tells the story of Father Mason Harper (Mark O’Brien), a bargain basement Russell Crowe, who returns to his childhood home to spend time with a childhood friend while he awaits orders from the Church after several of his fellow Vatican exorcists are simultaneously killed.
However, this small town holds dark secrets about Mason’s past and the religious cult once run by his father, Angus (Shaun Johnston).
Thought dead, Angus reappears, forcing a reunion between father and son. But Angus is different now, and before long, Mason suspects he’s possessed, not by the devil, but by something possibly, holy.
When Mason attempts to exorcise the presence from his father, he sets off a chain of events that may end in a cataclysm of biblical proportions testing everything he holds sacred.
For horror fans who have already lost their faith in this horror sub-genre, there is little here that will restore it. An intriguing idea is lost in the clatter of this trippy and rather cringe battle between good and evil. It would try the patience of a saint!
(2/5)
