The Passion of the Christ

with Jim Caviezel, Monica Bellucci, Maia Morgenstern
Directed by Mel Gibson
Written by Benedict Fitzgerald 
(Fox Home Entertainment)
by Jamie Kiffel

Pasty-faced, hissing creatures with fangs. Cracked earth, glowing red. Children chanting “curse!” in a dead language as their eyes bulge and lips curl into demonic snarls.

Come ye fans of bone-cracking bludgeons, shrapnel-studded whips, and spraying, splattering, widow-making blood. This is the king of gore movies, marred with almost no dialogue. It is one great, long video of wickedly creative torture.

HEAR deranged, gore-spattered torturers shriek with pleasure, shoving metal shards into a gentle man’s flesh and ripping them out again – with the splashing sound of steaming blood!

SEE iron mallets shattering the knees of screaming sinners!

SMELL your own cold sweat as a man is slammed into stone, kicked, whipped, and smashed to moaning, broken pieces!

TASTE bile rising in the back of your throat as a man’s mouth fills with blood and he chokes, only to be kicked in the head and rammed into the pavement!

FEEL sick as a man’s mother kisses his feet, thick with blood – and pulls away to reveal a blood-caked mouth, herself!

This isn’t the latest Wes Craven film. This horror puts Aliens to shame. It is Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ! Watch it if you love Cannibal Corpse. Watch it if Faces of Death wasn’t enough for you. This movie throws The Bible out the window and makes way for GWAR-style dripping, disgusting fangs!

If you want to actually understand the story, turn on the option to hear narration (intended for the deaf). You’ll receive a beautiful, sympathetic reading of every scene. Of course, by doing so, you’ll also be partially masking the dizzyingly repetitive “amen amen” half-whispered moaning that fills this entire sprawling flick, a fact which may be relieving. The whole movie, after all, is presented like an episode of Twin Peaks: Shadowy, filled with make-up, impossible to decipher without a director’s notes, and generally bluish-purple (that last aspect is natural: The film is an apparent bruise on the industry).

If you love violence and are curious about how many times Jesus can topple over in slow motion, bleed profusely, and be savagely crushed under his cross without dying (before even getting nailed to it!), rent this film. If you want to be inspired, turn on Vangelis. This God film is faithless.
(www.foxhome.com)