Shudder Saturday: Shadow Of God (2025)

Whether it's completely incompetent or just slightly mishandled, Shadow Of God is an awful movie that should not have been allowed to come to fruition. It's clear what happened. Someone thought "aha, we'll do an exorcism movie, but the main spirit to be exorcised could be god." And that's all they really had. Because there's nothing else here, beyond that one idea, that makes any good impression.

Mark O'Brien plays Mason Harper, a super-exorcist, the kind of exorcist that other exorcists ask to help them out on the biggest exorcisms. Things take a turn for the strange when Mason's father, Angus (Shaun Johnston), turns up. Angus has been out of his life for many years, mainly due to him being dead. Different people have different interests in the end result of this, but it will all boil down to just how Mason and Angus deal with one another.

Director Michael Peterson isn't a first-timer, which is a big surprise. I even quite enjoyed one of his previous features, Knuckleball. I haven't previously encountered the work of writer Tim Cairo, but he has a similar number of projects under his belt. Both of these men should have known better than this, and both should have either spent a lot more time on honing the central idea or just accepting that it wasn't strong enough.

Things aren't helped by the leads either. O'Brien isn't very good, sadly, and never feels like anything else but an actor trying hard to deliver his lines. The same goes for Johnston. Adrian Hough does a bit better with his role, although the screenplay wastes the opportunity for his character to be much more interesting than he is, and Jacqueline Byers is very good in the role of the sympathetic, and potentially due-to-be-endangered, Tanis Green.

If I'm feeling charitable then I guess some may find enough to enjoy here, if they're after a film that hints at roads it never commits to driving down. There's not enough full-blooded horror, not enough to make you care about the characters, and the philosophical Gordian knot at the heart of it all is actually just two bits of drying string that unwind and snap with the application of the slightest pressure. I cannot recommend anything here, and I have been trying to think of one decent audio and/or visual highlight. 

There have been many bad exorcism movies over the years, as well as a few very good ones, and this sadly joins that list of failures. Just how bad is it? Well . . . I'd probably choose to watch The Exorcist: Believer ahead of having to rewatch this. THAT'S how bad it is.

2/10

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The Fog (2005)

A remake that nobody really wanted turns out to be a film that few people will love. The Fog has one purpose in life, and that's to make horror fans, like myself, roll our eyes when we talk about the 1980 version of The Fog and have to add "the John Carpenter one". Of course, the same could be said about The Thing and Halloween, but it's this one that rankles the most, perhaps due to the way that an atmospheric, campfire tale of a movie is turned into a horrible, clumsy, teen horror.

Tom Welling stars as Nick Castle (that reference/in-joke is about as good as it gets, folks). Nick is making a living in the small community of Antonio Island. The community is about to unveil a statue honouring its founding fathers, but it seems that they may not have been too honourable in the dealings that led to a major boost in local fortunes. As people gather to celebrate, a fog starts to roll in, and that fog seems to contain some spirits who want revenge for wrongs exacted upon them.

Cooper Layne may not have written the best script here (adapting ideas from the original material by John Carpenter and Debra Hill), but director Rupert Wainwright certainly doesn't help with any of the choices that he makes. None of the horrible CGI or jump scares are a patch on anything from the original movie. It may be unfair to compare the two, but when so many similiar elements are onscreen, and the recent version is overshadowed by a film that was made twenty five years previously, I think there's good reason to comment.

Welling tries, but he's no leading man. Maggie Grace is just . . . . . there as Elizabeth, the sorta girlfriend of Welling's character, and it's only Selma Blair who really makes this worth a watch. Taking on a role so memorably played by the gorgeous Adrienne Barbeau is no mean feat, but Blair doesn't do too badly at all, despite the script leaving her hanging out to dry in the third act. DeRay Davis, Kenneth Welsh, Adrian Hough and some other folk all play second fiddle to the the not-so-special effects.

Taking a movie and remaking it badly isn't really a major sin, despite what we fans will sometimes say. Taking a film that really crafted a perfect campfire tale, however, and then pissing on that fire and trying to serve up the wet ashes to people? Well, that's not really a major sin either, but it should be. Oh yes, it should.

3/10

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