New World Order: The End Has Come (2013) Reviews

• Could have been interesting, does everything wrong

  YeastOfEden2016-02-11

  Lately, I've been on a "bad Christian movie" kick, and when I watched "New World Order" on Amazon Prime, it managed to crouch even lower than my expectations. While I was expecting this film to have a low budget, it appears that this movie was not only funded by one married couple, Duane and Antoinette McCoy, but also directed and written by them. And this pair, while clearly knowing nothing about filmmaking, decided to make their own Hunger-Games-Divergent-Maze-Runner-esque dystopia while giving it a Biblical spin. Some great films were made on a low budget, but those at least relied on a decent story or interesting characters to make up for their absence of visual grandeur. This film has almost no good qualities to fill the empty void of boring visuals. The actual Book of Revelations is very interesting. It can be interpreted allegorically in a thousand different ways, and contains some epic, almost psychedelic imagery if taken literally. If you read some verses, it sounds like a great film premise, and could lead to all sorts of creative license. But this movie contains only the bare minimum of what you'd expect: the Beast from the Sea is actually an evil dictator, he demands everyone get a tattoo to buy goods, nations form an alliance to worship him, so on and so forth. The McCoys have probably never heard the valuable phrase "show, don't tell". They squeeze out their exposition in dialogic tidbits as the story progresses, assuming that their tiny budget gives them an excuse not to show some creativity in how they flesh out their world. Indeed, their futuristic dystopia seems to look EXACTLY like our world. Now, this could lead to some interesting commentary that we are living in that world right now. While that seems a bit doom-and-gloom, it's a clever way to get around those budget constraints. But this movie's society is nothing like ours: there's a Supreme Chancellor that rules over the entire population (which seems to be about 20) and he forces everyone to get decal tattoos of some zigzaggy circular nonsense under penalty of death. Our heroine is a well-endowed girl named Demi, played by Melissa Farley, who wears tight-fitting grey tops to make up for her total absence of personality. Curious that the Christian version of Katniss is more sexualized than Katniss herself. She gets a love interest named Jason, and with her friends Christen and Cedric, forms one of those friend groups that never happen in real life but seem to be "in" after the success of Harry Potter. There isn't enough chemistry between them to fill a thimble. Our female leads spend half the movie playing with their already-outdated phones (Because we need to relate to the young crowd! So let's show teens calling each other rather than diving into their emotional state!) and the other half whining and crying. The girls in this movie are annoyingly submissive, and they always end up an emotional wreck that runs to their man for comfort. Kevin Herrmann as the unnamed villain is at least enjoyably awkward, and one of the only bits of entertainment I salvaged from this film was seeing him walk onto the screen and not even pretending to know what he's doing. The only other bit of entertainment I got was one mid-sentence death scene later in the film, which was so abrupt and poorly acted that I burst out laughing. The other user reviews criticize this film for taking the Bible too literally and being too Christian. Honestly, it isn't even that religious. They barely even mention Jesus or God, maybe twice or thrice in the entire film. It's never addressed that accepting the Mark means conscious worship of the Devil; the characters just sort of don't like it. They even misquote the Bible at one point: the Beast that emerges to rule the Earth has ten horns, not two. If you're going to make a film about crazy religious doomsday prophecies, at least get them right! Of course, they eventually go for the generic "band of freedom fighters" route. As if dividing society into five factions wasn't silly enough, now we've got Jesus-loving Merry Men fighting against the evil Satanic government. This film has a high death toll, obviously to make it dark and edgy like Hunger Games, but since you don't care about any of the characters, the viewer is left emotionless. I wasn't expecting much out of "New World Order", but I wasn't expecting it to fall below student film level. In the realms of acting, cinematography, dialogue, and pure storytelling, this movie fails badly. I save the one-star rating for films that fill me with disgust and loathing, and it wasn't able to do even that. I'm open to its premise, but it only trudges along through its clichés, boring the audience and the cast, without the courage to explore any of its ideas on a deeper level.

• Christianity is a doomsday cult

  jimrntx2015-10-20

  This movie was bad. Really bad. Even low budget films can be good, it just takes a good plot, writing, acting, camera work..... this movie has none. The plot itself is what many christians believe is going to happen according to scripture. This movie is less for entertainment than for teaching young chrsitians what the bible says is going to happen and to scare them into following the bible. Christianity is a doomsday cult and this movie exemplifies that fact. The McCoy's have many credits throughout the film, producer, director, writer, but they also are credited for casting, wardrobe, musical score (selection and composing), and other credits. I understand that a low budget would mean the creators of the movie would do many tasks themselves, but this goes a little further, is it a case of micromanagement? Had they tasked out some of the duties and focus on quality filmaking perhaps the movie would have been less of a stinker. Several other McCoy's are listed in the credit, definitely a family affair, cheap labor or a tax write off?

• Bad

  bilejo2014-05-19

  In my opinion it has poor acting, poor musical score/effects and its a sorry attempt at trying to interpret Biblical story lines. I cannot believe that it is likely that the events as described in the Bible will ever unfold so brazenly as depicted in this account. Such would have to be more clandestine or everyone would know what is actually happening...and that would defeat the very strategy and tactics necessary for success of the long ago 'prophesied' evil! Perhaps a well meaning message was intended to be conveyed but there comes a time when people have to stop taking the apocrypha so literal. Scholars and theologians have never been able to make accurate interpretations of Revelation and probably never will. The Book of Revelation is the "Revelation of "Jesus Christ" and that one point needs to be remembered, otherwise well meaning individuals may do more harm than good in respect to leading people to the awareness needed as the Epistles of Paul so cunningly explain to those 'who have ears to hear'. I give it a one star rating and I take note that the "McCoy" name is repeatedly in the initial credits to the point of boredom - to even include the aforementioned music. Could vanity enter into the presentation of the credits? To me this repetition just means McCoy must take the bulk of the credit for what I think is a pitiful production.

• Great idea but execution needs work

  laronaustin2017-08-20

  I just got done watching the film and thought it was an interesting story. I' believe revelations is a subject matter that if done right could be poignant . I know personally that it's extremely difficult to get a FEATURE film made, especially on a diminutive budget. You are faced to go through the gauntlet of people that criticizing your work, who are ignorant to to the battle of making a film. It can be a cruel world so you better have thick skin! With that said, some reviewers criticize the filmmaker for taking the Bible too literally. I totally disagree, because it's up to the filmmaker to visualize and create a world from his or hers interpretation. It's like saying the sky is blue, depending of you are in a different region the sky maybe orange or black. It's subjective. It's not fair to say the filmmaker took revelations too literally when Christian films like Passion of the Christ and The Last Temptation of Christ follow the Bible story closely. (Not saying this film is in the same league) I'm merely using these as examples to say the filmmaker is the impetus of the story telling process. My issue with the film is that mise en scene was executed poorly. The film elements did not complete a fluid story. I feel the characters needed to drive the story plot and help give forward momentum. It seemed like the actors where lost on screen and needed to be guided. I didn't feel any emotion or connections to the character nor did I feel like they had motivation or an super objective. The Cinematography did not help the story and at time was distracting and felt unmotivated. The story was paint by numbers and was missing life. The script should always be the blueprint before building the house. One of the reviewers mentioned that the filmmaker name was all on the credits. This should never happen, even if you are forced to do everything yourself on set( which it happens on indie films) never have your name take up 70 percent of the crew jobs. It can come across as hubris. Again I know it's challenging being a filmmaker and you will fail a tone of times especially this probably being the filmmakers first film. Keep making films and never give up. This should be a project that the filmmaker grows and learn from. Learn from the mistakes and make a better film next time. He got the film made so I'm not going to straight up bash the film and encourage negativity but give constructive criticism. Hope his next film It's a better.