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, ‘elp 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 fits 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 prophecy expose himself as a moronic prophet, as 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