Divine Intervention

Description

Product Description Steve Reynolds, strung out on drugs, gets a divine vision and is inspired to embark on a ruthless quest of recruiting people into the Lord s Army. A sinner in his midst gets two options prayer or the crossbow. Battling his own compulsive demons as well as a checkered past, Steve brings the word of the Lord down on the sinners of Ware, MA one arrow at a time. Will Steve save any souls with his own brand of vigilante divinity? Only God knows. Review Holly (Fenn) and Sarah (Hale) travel to a small town for a night of partying, but they soon find themselves in the caught up in a struggle of nerves between the town bad-boy (Erha) and a third-rate thug (Cirone). Things go from bad to worse when a crazed meth-head (Clay) goes on a murder-spree motivated by a theology based on the Bible and lessons learned from the reality TV show "Survivor, and a belief he is harvesting souls for the Army of God. "Divine Intervention" is a low-budget thriller that occupies a space somewhere between "Scream" and any one of a dozen exploitation flicks from 1960s and 1970s where innocent young people find themselves meanced by evil and crazed druggies in the isolated countryside. For most of its running time, it's a better film than both contemporary and old-time examples of this type of movie, because it moves forward at a steady pace, is free of padding--there is not a single scene of characters wandering through the woods or drving aimlessly donw the road--and features actors who are familiar enough with their craft and their lines to actually portray characters instead of just run lines and keep to their blocking. Another aspect that sets this film apart from others like it is the professionalism with which it has been produced. Real money was spent on cameras, lights, and sound equipment-no camcorder microphones here, nor any badly done day-for-night shots. The film has also clearly been carefully editing and taken through the entire post-production process, aspects many low-budget filmmakers don't pay anywhere near enough attention to. (There are still a couple of rough spots here and there--like ambient noise changing between a close-up and an over-the-shoulder shot during an conversation between two characters, and an obvious lack of discharge from a gun that gets fired into the camera--but these flaws can be found in movies made with ten times the financial and technical resources that Chaffee and crew had at their disposal, so they are not at all damning. Particuarly not when one considers the state of post-production on most other low-budget films.) "Divine Intervention" is also blessed with a superb casting. The lead actors are all decent, and the Beautiful People look of the majority of the cast makes the ragged meth-head look of Vic Clay's "Father Reynolds" character that much stronger. (In fact, Clay has a number of great moments in the film, moments which would have fallen flat if he had been a lesser actor. Look in particularly for the scene where he is trying to impart one of his Bible/"Survivor"-based lessons to his brain-fried homicidal minion.) The film's dialogue is also well-crafted for most of its running-time. A number of characters have unique voices, something that screen-writers achieve all too rarely. In fact, the whole idea of incorporating "Survivor" into the fabric of Father Reynolds' psychosis was a great idea, as it lends both humor and creepiness to the character... and it's references that virtually everyone seeing the movie will understand and laugh at. I know this, because I've never seen a complete episode of "Survivor", I can't think of a single friend who was a fan of the show, yet "Survivor" was a large enough part of pop culture for a while there that I picked up enough about it to understand every reference that Father Reynolds' makes. I hardly ever say this, but I think Rufus Chaffee is a talent to watch for in the future. --Steve Miller, RottenTomatoes