oscaralbert Review of Matthew 18

Matthew 18 (2014)

Heads would roll (literally) if such a crass misuse . . .

[4/10 · 19 November 2014]

. . . of the world's OTHER leading "holy book" was offered in counterpoint to the Churchploitation mess arbitrarily labeled MATTHEW 18. The producers of MATTHEW 18 brazenly flash two gospel verses on-screen as this ragged wreck begins, apparently believing that their target audience is incapable of actually reading this much at one sitting. However, any SOBER audience members who stick out this textbook case of bad film making to its bitter end will realize that what story there is has NOTHING to do with this Bible passage. Maybe the MATTHEW 18 crew harbored a delusional belief that they could outdo Charles Manson and spark an outbreak of "Helter Skelter" by attracting a mixed crowd half Fundamentalist (with their Biblical title) and half Gameboy (with their gratuitously random insertion of two dozen F-bombs and perverse sexual allusions to "earn" their "R" rating). The only spooky thing about this flick is that 95% of the actors' line readings are atrociously insincere sounding. It's as if the crew intentionally threw their mostly unknown cast off whatever "game" they had through the use of bad make-up application and tawdry costuming, and then filmed them (as they felt like total buffoons) during their FIRST read through of the script, using THAT as the movie's final cut! How else to explain all the garbled inflections, implying that none of the film's characters had the least idea of what their lines MEANT? This flick is incoherent in both plot and tone. Boo!