- Directed by Christopher Smith
- Written by Christopher Smith, Laurie Cook
- Stars Jena Malone, Danny Huston, Thoren Ferguson
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 31 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRjG65M6L2c
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
This has a little bit of a slow start, but we do gradually get to find out what’s really going on and who’s behind it. The movie blurs the lines a little between good and evil, right and wrong. And raises some questions about who is really in charge. We thought it had a cool wrap up and liked it a lot.
Spoilery Synopsis
A woman walks down the street thinking about guardian angels. Suddenly, an old nun walks up and points a gun at her.
We cut to the same woman, Grace, giving an eye exam to an old woman. She goes to see John, an old friend and teacher, about the old woman’s case. She goes home to work on her computer when, suddenly, the lights go out. We get glimpses of a nun in the background, inside the house, but Grace doesn’t see anything. She gets a phone call from the police, who say they’ve found the body of her brother, the victim of a murder suicide.
Credits roll as she travels to the remote convent where her brother’s body was found. DCI Harris fills her in on the investigation. They think Grace’s brother, a priest, killed another priest and them himself. Harris is trying to piece together what actually happened and why. He tells the story about how one of the nuns thought they saw the devil and poked their own eye out. They’re an extreme sect.
Grace and Harris meet Mother Superior, and we see that Grace isn’t interested in religion at all. The old woman blames a demon for the deaths. She gets a vision of Michael warning her that it’s not safe there; then she faints.
When Grace wakes up, she meets Father Romero from the Vatican. She goes back to sleep and dreams about a middle-ages witch hunt. She goes to the place where Michael died and sees many nuns dropping off the same cliff. She faints again and wakes up in the convent. She confronts the whole group of nuns at dinnertime.
Father Romero takes Grace on a tour of the ruins of the old church and explains the history of the place. He seems straightforward and honest, exposing that the Mother Superior cleaned up Michael’s body before the police arrived.
She goes through Michael’s books and finds a really weird one that she can’t read. Except that she can read it somehow. We get another flashback to young Grace doing things she shouldn’t be able to.
We cut to Romero arguing with Mother Superior and the other involved nuns. Grace and Sister Meg talk about life in the convent.
DCI Harris questions Mother Superior. Kate’s rude to all the religious people, and we soon get a flashback as to why. Her father was a religious nut who kept them locked in cages, which explains her attitude and also why the two siblings have a secret code that only they can read. Kate watched as her father killed their mother.
When their father was captured, the convent tried to adopt the two children. We get a flashback to that as well, but the old priest and nun really only wanted Grace. As the kidnapping progressed, something happened, and a truck ran into the kidnappers.
She tells this to Romero, who believes Michael came there to find a relic. He offers several ancient books to Grace, and they’re in code as well. The same code she thought was her and her brother’s. The books talk about the Knights of the Morning Star and his shadow. We get another flashback to Grace’s brother Michael being tortured for information about the relic. He refuses to talk, and when he gets up he stabs the old priest, which is how he died.
Grace watches as a nun stabs herself, and the next thing we see, she’s talking to DCI Harris about what she’s learned. She stops in at the prison to meet her father and asks why he did the things he did. He believes that she’s the devil’s own child, and he should have done even worse. He’d died in a storm, and she prayed for him to come back, which he did, but he wasn’t the same after. When she tells him that Michael died, he tells her to “bring him back.” He doesn’t think she can die. He points out that wherever she goes, death and destruction soon follow.
Mother Superior talks to Harris, and she says that Grace is the relic; not only that, but Grace knows this herself.
Grace watches as an invisible force beats up one of the nuns who was trying to hurt Grace. She walks back to the convent, where no one seems surprised that she’s now covered in blood.
Father Romero does a prayer to “consecrate her,” and then opens up a door to an underground place beneath the church. “She must be contained for eternity; her power is a threat to Christ,” we hear someone say. As Romero tells the nuns to seal the crypt, all Hell breaks loose in the church, killing him. “So that was your plan, to bury me in a tomb? What happened to forgiveness?” Grace asks.
Grace goes up to the “suicide ledge” and starts walking backwards, the way Romero explained to her. Before she gets too close to the edge, Harris shows up and tries to talk her out of it.
She jumps. And falls very, very slowly. Slowly enough for another flashback. We see that somehow, Grace has been time-travelling through young Grace’s childhood, saving her from many bad things, sometimes invisibly. She even has a conversation with the about-to-die Michael. She tries to persuade him not to, but he says he must. The mother superior and two nuns there feel invisible grace push past them and see Michael’s one-sided conversation with invisible Grace. Before he jumps to his death. Then she finishes her own fall off the cliff.
In the morning, Harris sends boats out to find Grace’s body, but that’s not easy. Mother Superior tells him that Grace isn’t dead; she’ll go on using her power until she’s stopped.
We flash to Grace, drinking with her old friend John. She’s looking very healthy now. She still doesn’t like churches. John mentions that the old woman from the beginning now has perfect sight; it’s a miracle.
We cut back to the opening scene, with Mother Superior pointing a gun at Grace on the street. Out of nowhere, she’s hit by a vehicle and killed. Grace is her own guardian angel…
Brian’s Commentary
It’s slow going in the beginning, and we don’t know who’s good or bad for a very long while. Still, the mystery and suspense build up continuously, and it comes to a fun ending.
It looks good, it’s well acted, it’s a mystery where we do get all the answers in the end. I liked it.
Kevin’s Commentary
I liked the places it went with theology and angels, and how far people would go to protect the status quo. Basically, she’s a fallen angel slumming as a human, hiding the memory of who she really is from herself most of the time. Very cool. It does have a slow start, but I thought the finish was great. I highly recommend it.
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