Filled to the brim with incomprehensible horror, The Church is director Michele Soavi’s follow-up to his feature film debut, Stagefright. Billed in some areas as the third Demons entry, the film has more in common with Rosemary’s Baby and John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness, released only two years prior, than it does with the series.
There is some connective tissue between the two, namely the presence of producer Dario Argento and the premise of people trapped together fending off supernatural entities. But while Demons and its sequel features superb creature makeup and tons of gore, The Church trades in surreal imagery and set pieces that form a somewhat cohesive but altogether disjointed story.
The narrative begins in the Middle Ages, where a group of knights slaughter an entire village based on the assumption one of its citizens is a devil-worshipping witch. The knights bury the corpses in a mass grave and construct the titular church atop it, as a means of keeping the supposed evil trapped within.
Fast-forward to present day, where Evan (Tomas Arana), the church’s new librarian, arrives for his first day at work. A wannabe archeologist, Evan loathes his new job and seeks a project that will bring him fame and fortune. He thinks he’s found what he’s looking for when Lisa (Barbara Cupisti) discovers a parchment in the church’s dilapidated catacombs that appears to be hundreds of years old. Evan obsesses over the document, eventually discovering hidden passages in latin that speak of a stone with seven eyes.
This leads Evan to return to the church in the middle of the night to search for the stone. He finds it in the catacombs, affixed to a large cross on the ground, and when he moves it aside, naturally, all hell breaks loose. It becomes up to a friendly archer priest (Hugh Quarshie) and the young daughter of the church’s sacristan (Asia Argento, in one of her earliest film roles) to restore balance and keep the evil contained.
While not much more can be said of the story, the film’s visuals and special effects deserve special recognition, in particular a shot of a winged creature embracing a nude woman — a direct reference to Boris Vallejo’s Vampire’s Kiss painting Also of note is the music, alternately by Keith Emerson (of Emerson, Lake & Palmer fame), Philip Glass and Goblin. The Church is overall a splendid audio/visual experience that’s a must-see for fans of surreal horror. —Christopher Shultz