THE OMEGA CODE

The Omega
Code

• Directed by Robert Marcarelli

• Written by Stephan Blinn and
  Holiss Barton

• Staring Casper Van Dien as
  Gillen Lane, Michael York as Stone Alexander, Catherine Oxenberg as Cassandra

  Barasche and Michael Ironside as Domenic

A secret code in the bible predicts about the same
thing the bible predicts explicitly in Revelations: an evil ruler, world
domination, etc. Gillen saves the world by converting from self-help guru and
academic to Christian, which somehow, indirectly thwarts the Antichrist.

Fucking Christians fundamentalists. They are usually
good for a laugh and this is not truer of anyone than the people at TBN, the
Trinity Broadcasting Network, which produces some of the funniest programming
this side of the Family Guy. When I saw TBN Film’s The Omega Code on
the shelf, I had to rent it.

Omega has some laugh out loud moments, like when
the Antichrist solves the intractable Arab-Israeli conflict. In one scene he
approaches the bargaining table, saying, “Gentlemen, I have a proposal.” Cut
immediately to the next scene in which the peace is announced, in no great
detail. But the funniest thing about this movie is just how fundamentally bad

it is.

The plot is ridiculously contrived so as to squeeze in
as much of the TBN world view as possible. The protagonist, Gillen , begins as
a pawn of evil. Apparently they couldn’t decide whether to make him a self-help
guru or an academic (both are evil because they look outside of religion for
answers), so they made him both. Tony Robins meets Richard Rorty, I guess.
Also, pre-converted Gilligan and the Antichrist awkwardly endorse evolution
about three times each. Towards the end of the film Gilligan renounces his
foolish adherence to reason by begging, “help me Jesus.” This, in itself, stops
the Antichrist.

Gilligan considers divorcing his wife, leading to five
minutes of lecture from an older friend about the importance of keeping a
marriage together “no matter what [?!]” This, of course, has nothing to do with
the rest of the story.

The story of Revelations is attached to attempts at
international governance. The EU and notions such as a global currency are
suddenly part of the assent of the Antichrist. When said Antichrist is elected
chairman of an international federation of states, basically a global version of
the EU, he declares himself God. Naturally, everybody pulls out, but the guy
suddenly has the world’s most powerful military and a nuclear arsenal at his
personal disposal. How the fuck did that happen?

We are also reminded about the evil of Papists. The
one character who might be cast in a worse light than the Antichrist is a former
priest who serves as the assistant to the Antichrist. Why would a Catholic
priest join up with a guy who clearly fit’s the profile of the Antichrist? You
got me. But at one point the church itself joins up. Protestants are
conspicuously absent from the lineup of dupes that also includes Jews, Muslims
and Buddhists. So we get a nice mix of political and religious propaganda.

Oh, then there’s the code itself. It’s a mathematical
reworking of biblical text that allows us to look into… the past. Yes, it turns
out that if you screw around with the code enough you can make it predict
historical events. It predicts the actions of characters in the movie to some
extent, but these predictions only reiterate parts of Revelations.

The story telling is awful. About a quarter of the
plot is revealed through news reports. The primary actors are professional.
You might even recognize some. The supporting cast was probably culled from a
Christmas Pageant somewhere in Nebraska. The directing and editing are
comically bad.

What I love about the film is that it is effectively
anti-Christian. The movie was made for and by Christian Fundamentalists, who
made it a financial success, and it is one of the dumbest most implausible
movies of the past few years. Only the sort of person who takes the bible as
literal truth could swallow a movie like this and only the sort of person who
can swallow a movie like this can take the bible as literal truth. This
film just screams, “we are idiots!”

If you’re interested in a good movie on this subject I
suggest The Rapture, directed by Michael Tolkin and staring Mimi Rogers.
If you want to play the home version of MST3K, get your mitts on this one ASAP.

DVD

Special Features. My DVD came with a great commercial
for a Christian web site called crosswalk .com. It shows an open stretch of
asphalt bisected by a narrow crosswalk. A green light flashes and a herd of
people crowd through the crosswalk, not one stepping over the lines. The
accidental symbolism is obvious, the people look like unusually obedient cattle being herded to
slaughter. But were the commercial makers really that oblivious?

The “Making of a Feature” mini-documentary is pretty
good as well. See a scholar of biblical prophesy expose himself as a moronic
fraud. Here people say things like “I played his co-star.” Wonder why none of
it was edited out. Laugh.

• Film 1

• Acting 1

• Directing 1

• Story 0

• DVD goodies 6

• Rewatchability 5

• It would take me 9 beers to
  completely enjoy this movie, although I would prefer to come up with some sort
  of drinking game.

• Number of times I paused the
  film to do something else 0

• Score I would give if I were

  rating the film for being unintentionally funny 8.5