Main cast: Ry Barrett (Sam Becker), Camille Hollett-French (Jessica Martin), William Foley (Charles Monroe), Soroush Saeidi (Nadir Bhindra), Katie Uhlmann (Rachel O’Hara), Jo Jo Karume (Roger Jackson), Chelsey Marie (Victoria Vandecape), Ellie O’Brien (Ceilia Scott), and Jason Martorino (Daniel Levine)
Director: Greg A Sager
Eight people, including a creepy little girl, wake up in a building with blood-splattered walls and shadows all over, with only fuzzy memories of their life shortly before they end up in this place. They are strangers to one another, so what is going on here? Now, “strangers wake up in a building” is basically a tired cliché by now, as every aspiring film maker finds it easy and cheaper to just rent some building for a few days and make some low budget Saw knockoff. Kingdom Come introduces some actual supernatural elements, however, so perhaps it’s not that unnecessary. It still is, but not that much.
A couple of stereotypes with barely any character development show up in this movie and start flailing around as they get picked off one by one. Like Saw, this movie tries to pass off its gore as some kind of morality test, as our ragtag group of misfits are actually sinners who must pass some kind of test to prove that they can be redeemed. It’s kind of unfair, if you ask me, to expect these people to do whatever they usually do and then fail them without actually telling them that they are being tested. Still, I guess we all need ways to assure ourselves that those who die in this movie “deserve” what they get, so that we can all enjoy the splatter without being guilty.
It’s too bad that the monsters here look like they are wearing hobo sacks with leftover Christmas ornaments pasted all over, and the message of redemption can be quite bewildering. I suppose some people will equate having an abortion or being a junkie to be a sinner at the same level as being a pedophile or a murderer, as this is exactly what happens in this movie. Me, however, I feel that this unequal level of sins is a lame plot device as, predictably enough, the sinners who ranks lower on the Oh My God, Please Die You Piece of Shit meter end up surviving the whole ordeal.
The acting is borderline decent, although Ry Barrett, the obvious hero, sometimes seem to be reading aloud from a teleprompter or something. The lighting and sound effects are decent considering the budget – or what little of it – of this movie. But everything about it feels like stale ham being heated over again, and what little that is different ends up being unintentional funny. Kingdom Come may try to be something else, but it ends up being just another one of the many Saw-wannabes out there. What’s the point?
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