Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
When a rogue priest discovers the exact date the Antichrist will be born, he enlists a Death Metal record store clerk and a cheesy TV psychic for an urban spree of gore, sacrilege and twisted humor to prevent the Apocalypse.
Alex de la Iglesia's breakout is a gloriously deranged collision of Catholic guilt, heavy metal culture, neo-nazism, and apocalyptic dread set against a grimy Madrid Christmas. Its premise alone is wildly singular — a guilt-ridden priest deliberately committing sins to attract the Devil — and the film executes its dark comic-horror vision with a distinctive anarchic energy that feels utterly one-of-a-kind in world cinema. The acting is committed and fun rather than exceptional, the cinematography is energetic and kinetic but not transcendent, and the plot holds together well enough while serving mainly as a delivery mechanism for its surreal escalations. The ending is satisfying but slightly conventional given how deranged the journey was.