The Seventh Sign (1988) stars Demi Moore as Abby, a non-religious heavily pregnant woman, who has previously attempted suicide, trying to stop the Apocalypse so her new baby doesn’t die like the last one. She finds out that the world is going to end when Jesus (yes, that Jesus) rents her and her husband’s spare room. Sadly, he doesn’t look like a mutant lamb. Still, he’s been very busy and before he made it to the US, he had already broken four seals, unleashing death and mayhem in Africa and the Middle East. Unlike in the Book of Revelation, the seals are in separate scrolls, not on a single one, and Jesus just drops them wherever he’s broken them.
At first, I thought Abby’s baby was going to be the typical Hollywood version of the Antichrist. They kept repeating the birth date, 29th of February, and I thought that was going to be significant because the first Beast comes from the sea and Pisces is a water sign. Clearly, I was overthinking it. I was also overestimating this movie’s entertainment value. The Seventh Sign (thus named no doubt because the seventh seal was already taken) stupidly limits the Four Horsemen to news of war and death on TV and focuses on the next three (lame) seals. It also skips the Beasts, even though we see Abby and Avi reading the Book of Revelation and not noticing that part of the Apocalypse was missing. God must’ve gotten impatient and decided to ditch them because Humanity sucks too much. By the way, I’d love to see a story in which the heroes vanquish the 666 Beast only for the Beast From The Sea to be all “Surprise!” and everyone freaks out because they got all their information about the Apocalypse from Hollywood movies and don’t understand WTF is going on.
Moving on. Littering Jesus tells Abby that the only way to stop the Apocalypse is if one of the steps is stopped. He also tells her that since Heaven ran out of souls, her baby is going to be born dead. Jesus is a real downer. When she finds out about his true purpose, she stabs him. Holy shit, Abby stabbed Jesus! Of course, he doesn’t die, and she ends up in the psych ward for a couple of days because she told everyone what happened. Thankfully, Abby is one of those landladies who like to snoop and she finds a letter written in a Hebrew cipher in his room. She gives it to Jewish teenager Avi for him to translate. As soon as he does, he talks to a catholic priest, who assures him the Apocalypse is nothing but a metaphor and that there’ll be no heathen smiting. It most certainly is not a list of items to be checked one by one, so there’s nothing to worry about.
Meanwhile, the Vatican was worried about all the weird shit that had been happening and had sent Father Lucci to investigate. Upon his return, he assures them everything’s fine and those were just scientifically explainable natural phenomena. He’s lying and we, the viewers, know it. But why would some random priest want the world to end? Why!? Well, the answer is simple: Father Lucci is no ordinary priest. In fact, he’s none other than Cartaphilus! Yeah, I didn’t know who that was either. Sheesh, this movie keeps getting lamer. Anyway, he’s Pilate’s former guard who’s been cursed never to die for bitch-slapping Jesus and so he wants the Apocalypse to happen so he can finally rest. (Hmm, someone must’ve missed the part about human sinners being thrown in a fiery pit along with the beasts, Satan, and Azazel’s gang of naughty angels) While Lucci talks to Abby, she has a vision and sees him as a roman soldier beating Jesus. She’s there, too, as a follower of Jesus. She asks Cartaphilus to stop but then chickens out when he asks her if she’d die for him. Lucci tells her that she’s the seventh sign, or, more specifically, her child, who’s going to be the first baby born without a soul.
After reading a motel Bible, Abby and Avi decide that the only seal they can stop is the fifth one, which is dependent on the death of the last martyr, aka someone willing to die for God. Coincidentally, Abby’s lawyer husband has spent the whole movie trying to stop the execution of a convicted killer who claims he acted according to God’s law. The media even dubbed him the Word of God Killer. And what has this “martyr” done? Why, he murdered his parents because they were brother and sister and, according to Leviticus, incest is punishable by death. Hmm, so does this mean his parents were also Bible freaks? Really, how else could he have read the Bible? And not just the kid-friendly version of the New Testament Abby was taught in Sunday School, but the freaking Book of Leviticus. Didn’t his parents think that that might be a problem? Also, didn’t God change the rules when Jesus told his followers not to judge people? If people can’t judge others and God’s the only one who can judge anyone, didn’t this convicted killer overstep his duties when he decided to take divine justice into his own hands and murder his incestuous parents, thus indulging in the deadly sin of Pride? Why would he be a martyr? And what kind of fucked up message is this?
Abby and Avi turn out to be right because this movie is gross and Jesus even pays the little psycho a visit in his cell, looking lovingly at him while he’s praying. Abby believes that if she saves him, she’ll stop the Apocalypse and save her baby. When she shows up at the prison and starts yelling for the execution to be stopped, Lucci takes a gun from one of the guards to kill the Last Martyr himself. Shockingly, he succeeds. For a moment there, I thought the movie was going through with the Apocalypse. But of course, the real goal was for Abby to regain her faith. She was also shot and goes into labour in the middle of an earthquake. This time, she doesn’t chicken out and does die for him. In this case, “him” is her new-born. Littering Jesus shows up and tells Abby’s grieving husband, Avi, and everyone else in the room that Abby’s sacrifice refilled Heaven’s soul room, thus stopping the Apocalypse and giving Humanity a second chance. By the way, Jesus looks extremely punchable while explaining this. Really, he does. As he leaves, he tells Jewish Avi, who by now should be going through a major religious identity crisis, to write what happened.
I have to say I found Avi’s role extremely awkward. This isn’t some generic end of the world, this is the Christian Apocalypse. Jesus is right there, FFS! You can’t just say every religion mentions the end of the world and then have the Christian Messiah going around causing worldwide destruction that affects everyone. I didn’t bother to google this, but I’m guessing it’s one of those faith-based movies geared to an exclusively Christian audience, otherwise the filmmakers would’ve kept the more fun parts of the Apocalypse, like the Horsemen and the Beast. And isn’t Littering Jesus too nice? Mutant Lamb Jesus was a lot meaner.
VERDICT
The focus on the last three seals makes for a too religious movie, the part about the Last Martyr is disturbing AF, and Abby’s character arc gives this a very off-putting veneer of evangelical fervour. Though I’d never call this a good movie (or even a so bad it’s good movie), the absurdity of it all can be pretty funny at times.
By Danforth