LOOPHOLE * USA 2017 Dir: Jenni Ivers 86 mins
You have to admire the sheer chutzpah of a Christian propaganda “thriller” frequently employing awkwardly on-the-nose dialogue like “This isn’t like your video games! This is real life!” and “You couldn’t make this up!” It is important that we can enjoy cheap laughs at the expense of LOOPHOLE, because God hates sex, nudity, swearing and gore – which means the movie is missing everything we enjoy the most in our entertainment. The narrative flits between a lone, Bible-clutching woman taking refuge in a dystopian vision of 2052 and extended flashbacks to 2018, where a particular gene (“The Hamanara Strand”) has been for generations of war and violence.
Politicians vote for blood mapping while promising imminent world peace, everybody’s DNA is under scrutiny, society starts to fall apart and our heroine has something in her blood that could either save the world or (dramatic pause) end it. Oh, and she is an ancestor of Judas Iscariot. The cluttered script ropes in a dull New York Times reporter, the arrival of the protective “Watchers”, the sexy-sounding “Spear of Destiny” and an unsubtle Trump stand-in exploiting mass paranoia about terrorism as a means of maintaining his hold over the masses. It’s all played deadpan-straight, right up to a laughable happy ending that confirms loving God is the only way forward for us all. It’s too bad that He didn’t find the time or inclination to bless this creaky Sunday School-inflected genre movie with better sound quality and less shitty CGI.
Review by Steven West