Main cast: Alice Orr-Ewing (Laura Milton), Joe Doyle (Father Michael Marconi), Eveline Hall (Liz), Peter Mensah (Archangel Michael), Joe Anderson (Lucifer), Spencer Wilding (Beast of the Ground), Brian Caspe (Dr Laurent), and James Faulkner (Cardinal Vincini)
Director: Nathan Frankowski

Looking at the hideous poster of The Devil Conspiracy, I have a feeling that it will either be so bad that it’s good or just plain awful. It’s a gamble, but at my age, I may as well live on the wild side and take a chance on this thing.

As it turns out, this one is more entertaining than I initially expect it to be.

First, the story. It can appear tad convoluted at first, so please bear with me.

Now, it all begins with the Shroud of Turin being displayed in the Vatican City. It’s rare to this artifact to be exhibited like this, so many, many people flock to see it.

Then we have this genetic engineering company, led by Dr Laurent, that has found a way to retrieve the DNA of past historical prodigies that, for the right price, be used to produce to prodigy kids. This company is also a front of a cult dedicated to bringing Lucifer to Earth at the head of a mighty army, to turn Earth into his kingdom, and they plot to steal the Shroud, retrieve the DNA of Jesus on that thing, and use it to produce a child that be the new vessel of Lucifer.

Personally, I have my doubts about creating a kid from Jesus’s DNA in hopes of getting Satan’s baby, but these people claim that a prophecy tells them that this is the way to go, so hey, who am I to argue, really.

Oh, and then we have our lead female character, Laura Milton. She’s an American in an Italian university, and when she is introduced, she is seen begging her professor to accept her thesis, which is about how there is no such thing as “a dark side” in life because everything is sunny and awesome. Needless to say, he continues to say no her thesis but invites her to impress him in other ways at his apartment later that  evening. Oh, those funny Italians, they sure know how to woo a woman!

She has a friend, Father Michael Marconi, that gives her a pass to view the Shroud up close so that she can draw the images on that thing. I’m not sure why she wants to do that, but hey, plot.

So, the cult members led by their leader Liz break into the museum to steal the Shroud, and Michael stumbles upon Liz subtly banging her hammer against the glass case over and over. Well, too bad, she kills him.

Meanwhile, Laura tries to hide but is captured and taken along with the cult members, because Liz wants Lucifer to have a good selection of women to choose from when it comes to bearing baby Jesus.

Still, all is not lost. With his dying breath, Michael beseeches the archangel Michael to use his body as that winged dude sees fit to fight this evil, and lo and behold, now the angel accepts and now Father Michael is Archangel Michael. How convenient that they both have the same names and I can keep calling him Michael.

While this is marketed as horror, the movie is more appropriately an action movie as Michael does all kind of action figure stuff here. There’s nothing scary here, aside from mild gore and spooks marred by the cheap and fake-looking CGI.

I mean, who doesn’t wet themselves seeing this demon fetus coming out of the computer monitor during an ultrasound to say hello to Laura?

Still, the bad CGI is hilarious in many unfortunate ways, so I can’t say I object completely to its presence in this thing!

There are also many amusing and even laugh out loud moments here.

My favorite will be a Lucifer-possessed Laura feeling her water break, so she spreads her legs and lets the fluids splash all over poor Michael’s face. Turns out that the fluids are scalding hot—it’s a good thing that Michael has healing factor that lets him recover from all injuries almost immediately, I tell you.

Also, Michael’s true form is played by Peter Mensah, so when he is possessing the human corpse, I look how Mammon, Lucifer’s minion, tells him,”You look pale without your sword!”

Wait, I also laugh when Michael yells at a bunch of people attacked by demons to run, apparently oblivious to the fact that they have already run off and abandoned him long before he yells at them to flee.

Additionally, there are other unintentionally entertaining bad moments, such as Lucifer being unable to stop delivering monologues every time he is in a scene like a caricature of a comically terrible villain. There are also many really bad lines delivered with misplaced seriousness, further accentuating the unintentionally hilarious awfulness of this movie.

There are some fun moments that aren’t due to how bad they are, though. Eveline Hall is actually awesome as the villain Liz, and while Joe Doyle may not look like an action hero, he manages to go a solid job serving up the physicality and machismo necessary for key scenes.

However, the biggest annoyance here is Laura. She’s useless for the most part, existing solely as a damsel in distress, but at the same time, she is snotty, haughty, and dumb—not the best combo of traits to have under any circumstances.

As Professor MeToo said in the beginning, she is an American that thinks it’s perfectly fine to lecture Italians on how they are approaching the whole angels and devils thing wrong.

Also, she would stop and hold a gun at Michael after he has rescued her, without waiting for him to take her to safe place first, because she’s suspicious of him. Needless to say, she ends up very quickly back in the clutches of the cult.

Despite always needing to be rescued, Laura here will also scold those that rescue her because she thinks they aren’t rescuing her right, when she’s not being wrong and doing stupid things to necessitate more rescuing. It won’t be so bad if she had been deliberately written to be a Karen from hell, but like the rest of this movie, this character is served up in a completely serious manner—she is intended to be this strong woman with a deep hurt that she keeps inside, when what Laura ends up being is more like something expelled from one’s rear end during a number two.

So, all in all, this one is a pretty entertaining movie, although it’s what it is in a manner that is clearly unintended on the part of the people behind this thing.

Just watch out for the annoying Laura—the only saving grace to this useless wretch is that later in the movie, she’s possessed by Lucifer and hence becomes much more tolerable as a result. That’s how bad she is, that she’s halfway watchable only when she’s Satan incarnate.

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