"La Chiesa"/"The Church" is a great Gothic horror film made by Michele Soavi with wild usage of camera,very hypnotic Goblin soundtrack and overall creepy atmosphere.The film was written and produced by Dario Argento,so fans of Italian horror won't be disappointed.It starts out with incredible scene of massacre,where a crusading army kills all inhabitants of a small village.There is plenty of violence and the photography is absolutely stunning.Soavi uses the camera tricks only hinted at in his wonderful "Deliria"(1987).There are several amazing camera shots and the lighting is excellent.The film is visually striking and the gore effects are quite good.The sequences involving secret machinery built into the structure of the cathedral are especially well executed.A must-see for fans of Italian horror!

A church built on the site of a medieval massacre is being restored. The Teutonic Knights had killed all the villagers for mere suggestions of demonic spirits. New librarian Evan and Lisa uncover a piece of parchment. As Evan digs, he gets possessed by something buried underneath. Lotte is a young girl interested in their work with the catacombs. Her father Hermann also gets possessed. An ancient alarm is activated and the doors to the church are locked trapping a tour group of children and a wedding photo shoot.

There are lots of interesting visual concepts. The plot is a mess. It meanders without tension. There is nothing scary about this horror but it is compelling visually. Someone should work out simple expositions to explain the story. I am willing to excuse some of it as translation problems.

Michele Soavi's follow-up to his superb slasher STAGE FRIGHT is this visually stimulating but ultimately confusing thriller about demons materialising in a church. Originally conceived as a sequel to the two DEMONS flicks, this one also has a group of people trapped in an isolated location and gradually getting turned into evil beings. However, the difference is that THE CHURCH is a much more complicated film; whereas DEMONS had a fairly linear plot, this one goes off in all directions in a series of disjointed scenes which are artistically wonderful. The problem is that as a whole this film feels a bit like the Frankenstein's Monster; it's a bunch of different sequences all sewn together in one incoherent bundle which makes little sense at the end.

Things kick off in the promising opening which has a bunch of medieval knights slaughtering a gang of frightened villagers and kicking their severed heads through the mud. Unfortunately the film then cuts to the present day and it's another hour before anything else exciting happens. Until then we get some confusion about a newly-appointed librarian investigating a stone face in the floor of the crypt, where he has hallucinations. He cuts his hands open and gets a demonic voice, then turns back to normal and tries to rape a lover and cut open Asia Argento's stomach (!). It's as surreal as it sounds.

Until the action begins we have a couple of breathtaking tracking shots which are definitely in Dario Argento's style; I feel he had a little more input than simply "producer" here. A Goblin score thumps away in the background, and together with some weird architectural gargoyle faces some atmosphere is produced. But too much time is spent with characters running about in dark corridors and not really doing much. The real fun begins when an intricate mechanism shuts the church door and traps everybody inside; people don't start turning into monsters, as you might think, but go insane instead and there's mass chaos.

Some characters appear and disappear with little reasoning; none of them further the plot apart from providing some imaginative scenes of people being seduced by weird-looking monsters. These "demons" have the capacity to scare but are scarcely used. In one scene a naked woman gives herself to one of these monsters, it takes all sorts I guess. There is some nice gore thrown into the mess but not really that much considering; really only a few isolated but creative death scenes. One man pulls his own heart out of his chest (there's a novel cure for heartburn...) while another decides to commit suicide by jumping on to one of those concrete drills (I can think of less painful ways). Another person pulls their face off in a mirror in a scene heavily inspired by POLTERGEIST.

A cool Euro-cast fill out the roles of the survivors; Barbara Cupisti (STAGE FRIGHT) provides the glamour content. An ancient-looking John Karlsen (THE SHE-BEAST) even turns up as a wizened old priest. THE CHURCH is an enterprising and imaginative film ruined only by a too-complex script which tries to weave too many plot strands together in too short a time. It's worth watching but will probably leave you wondering "What?".