Made
by an evangelical Christian organization, Six
Hundred and Sixty-Six has a clear agenda: frightening non-believers into
embracing God before it’s too late. Yet the picture doesn’t fall into the
familiar Christian-movie trap of smothering viewers with gentle homilies.
Instead, the movie starts in a dark place and goes deeper into despair until
reaching a suitably intense ending. Better still, the film exudes intelligence
and specificity, thanks to a resourceful script by Marshall Riggan, and the use
of a claustrophobic location gives the piece a strong Twilight Zone vibe. That said, the movie is hugely flawed. Although
director Tom Doades shoots well, using deep shadows and sharp lines to create
moody images, Six Hundred and Sixty-Six
comprises nearly wall-to-wall dialogue, and the performances are stiff, with
actors robotically over-enunciating dialogue. Had Doades started the film in a
buttoned-up fashion and then gotten more naturalistic as the narrative gained tension,
he might have achieved a better result.
The film takes place in the near future,
when the world has divided into Eastern and Western factions. American soldier Col. Ferguson (Joe Turkel) is the new operations officer at an underground bunker
that he assumes is a missile silo. In fact, it’s a repository of human culture,
with artwork stored alongside computers stuffed with literature and philosophy.
The movie explores what happens when nuclear war unfolds aboveground, damaging
the life-support mechanisms of the underground bunker. Things skew theological
after that happens. The bunker’s main computer is programmed to recite random snippets
of poetry, speaking in a sexy female voice and ending every announcement with
“I love you.” One of the poetry snippets is a Bible verse, which gets the men
in the bunker wondering if the nuclear event was actually the apocalypse.
Every twenty
minutes or so, the filmmakers juice Six
Hundred and Sixty-Six with a quick action scene (some folks go crazy in
close quarters), but mostly the film is talk, talk, talk. Some of the chatter
is highly engaging and some less so, but it’s all a bit much. Although Turkel’s work is
never more than serviceable, Byron Clark gives an unnerving supporting turn
as Tallman, the erudite curator of the underground archive—is he a mad genius
or just mad? Even for devotees of end-of-the-world cinema, Six Hundred and Sixty-Six is a tough sit—too dry, too religious,
too slow—but if you accept the picture on its own terms, Six Hundred and Sixty-Six is consistently ominous and provocative.
Six Hundred and Sixty-Six: FUNKY
1 comment:
I'm willing to let a science fiction film get away with a lot as long as there's an interesting premise or idea somewhere in the story, and Joe Turkel's presence piques my curiosity. I'm sold!
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