Sixteen More Screams For Halloween: Day 13 (God Told Me To)

THEY'RE BRINGING LOVE, DON'T LET THEM
GET AWAY!!!

It's always fun when I shut one of these films off and just stare blankly at my TV and wonder A) what in the hell I just watched and B) how in the hell I am going to attempt to say anything coherent about it for my blog. Then I remember that I'm a finely-honed master of rambling and bullshitting and have been doing it for close to 25 years. Then I remember how old that makes me feel. Anyway, here's God Told Me To from Larry Cohen. We've encountered Larry Cohen before, as he worked on The Stuff. Does God Told Me To have anything to do with The Stuff? Not at all. It's just a weird little factoid, but in doing so I've filled out an intro paragraph and made enough buffer space that I can talk about the movie I just watched. See, I told you. I'm terribly clever at all this, and the conversational tone just helps. Okay, for real, what is this movie doing?

In theory this movie slots into a general trend from the 1970s towards religion and faith as a source of horror, as seen in films like Rosemary's Baby, The Exorcist, or The Omen. In practice I haven't actually seen any of those three films. (Created by a reprehensible person, a reputation that spooked me 20 years ago, and just plain haven't gotten around to it, in order of excuses for why.) Even so, there's something going on in New York City as a bunch of ordinary people go on out-of-nowhere killing sprees, calm and collected as they explain that they took the lives of innocent people because God told them to. The slow creeping vibe this movie gives towards the possibility of God influencing random people to murder in the name of the Lord definitely resonates with the me of here and now. I spent all summer watching Quantum Leap, a show which liked to imply that God was using Scott Bakula as a means to make things better in the world. This movie is the fucked-up dark mirror of that, which has the return of the divine as this vengeful Old Testament force which demands sacrifice and bloodshed in its name, and will kill any who disobey the will of a deity. Terrible things are going to happen, because God told them to.

And then the movie goes completely gonzo batshit. It's not God. The film's messiah figure, a Jesus Christ analog in their own right, is not here to bring about a golden age for humanity. They are a genderfluid alien/human hybrid with superpowers ready to destroy humanity and let their own kind thrive. All that religious buildup takes a hard swerve into "GOD IS JUST ALIENS AND VIRGIN BIRTHS OF MESSIAHS ARE JUST ALIEN ABDUCTIONS OF INNOCENT WOMEN". I just have to say part of the climax of this movie, and I am aware I sound completely out of it but this happens. In a final confrontation with this figure, after our protagonist has learned that he is an alien/human hybrid too, the Jesus analogue offers for him to procreate with the vagina on their left side and overtake humanity. Genderfluid half-alien Jesus with a vagina on their left side, in an invocation of where Jesus was stabbed on the cross. WHAT THE FUCK DO I EVEN DO WITH THAT KIND OF IMAGERY??? Our protagonist tears it all down, and that's the end of the movie. This movie... I don't know if it's good, but the opening buildup intrigued me and the madcap sci-fi madness kept me staring, so that's something. So, uhh. Maybe next time something a little more grounded.