Countdown: Jerusalem (2009 Video)
Religion and entertainment don't mix
7 June 2010
When I read the DVD box of the movie, I saw that it was made by "Faith Films", which gave me a big clue as to what the quality of the movie would be like. (Let's face it, most movies made by religious filmmakers are pretty bad.) Had I known before watching the movie that Faith Films was an offshoot of the notorious studio The Asylum, I would have had an even better idea of what I was going to witness.

To be fair, this Christian movie doesn't keep hitting the viewers' heads with "messages", instead for the most part by taking the portion of the Bible that deals with the last days and handling it as both an unfolding mystery and an end-of-the-world movie. Though if you are not familiar with what the Bible says about the last days, you will be confused by several parts of the movie. Even if you are familiar with the Bible, there are still a number of non-religious parts of the script that are confusing! For what was obviously a very low budget, the filmmakers managed to do some things well. It's decently shot, the CGI is pretty good for a cheapie movie, and they managed to shoot a lot of the movie on authentic Israeli locations. But the low budget keeps showing throughout, with liberal use of stock footage and scenes with no extras in the background.

The main problem with the movie is that there's no spark to it. Although the acting isn't awful, there's no passion, no conviction to the words the actors speak. The unfolding story moves extremely slowly, and there's never any excitement, tension, or thrills.

While this isn't the worst effort by The Asylum, it's still pretty dreary and cheap. I bought this movie and three other Asylum movies in a 4-movie DVD pack for just $5, and though this movie's share is $1.25, I still feel ripped off.
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