(By http://www.impawards.com/1987/prince_of_darkness.html, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17211922)
Not one of John Carpenter’s best films, but an enjoyable cult classic all the same. To be fair, JC set the bar so high with Halloween and The Thing that anything else feels ordinary, even if it’s still better than most. The guy didn’t make horror flicks. He made horror art.
Prince of Darkness is a bit muddled in its execution, settling more for atmosphere and vibes than a coherent story, much less compelling characters. The narrative centers around a group of scientists, grad students, and one very sweaty and apocalyptically paranoid Donald Pleasence (was this guy ever not freaking out in a Carpenter film?) as a priest, trying to make sense of some creepy green goo swirling around in a cylinder in the basement of some decrepit L.A. church.
Evidently, this green slime contains pure evil, or something. It’s never really clearly stated exactly what it is. The whole thing feels made up as it goes along.
Prince of Darkness toys with some interesting ideas, while throwing around enough scientific jargon to at least sound plausible. Basically, the idea is that “evil” is a force of nature. Something that can be measured with physics and science doodads and whatnot. Except evil can also somehow influence the surrounding world telekenetically whenever it feels like it.
Earlier in the film it’s stated that the Catholic Church misreprented evil as some figurehead, like Satan, when in fact it’s as common as gravity. But then later, after some of the college students have become influenced by the green ooze, they are are trying to conjure forth the Devil through a mirror, which acts as a portal to a dark dimension. Only the Devil’s hand appears in our world from the mirror, before Old Scratch is repelled back. Fans of Ridley Scott’s Legend will be reminded of Darkness’ appendage. And if Prince of Darkness works as anything, it’s as an unofficial sequel to the 1985 Tom Cruise-starring fantasy film. Whatever did happen to Darkness after Jack sends him hurling into the black void anyway? Now we know where he wound up.
The film is not bad, really. It has some clever ideas mixed in, and its many unexplained developments provoke questions in the viewer. What is the green ooze? Is it a personification of evil? Why does it happen to choose tonight to usher in the end of the world? Why does it need to possess college students and turn them into zombies to do its bidding? What exactly is all the scientific equipment measuring? Why do homeless vagrants surround the church, preventing the characters from escaping? Why are they killing people who try to leave? Is that really Satan trying to come through the mirror? What’s going to happen if he comes through into our reality? Is he going to end the world as we know it?
The film frustratingly doesn’t see fit to really answer anything.
Prince of Darkness boasts an impressively moody score reminiscent of the one from The Thing. There are some genuinely creepy sequences, such as the reoccuring “dream,” which is actually a signal sent from the future to warn the present. There are one or two good jump scares. Carpenter makes good use of his trademark over the shoulder shots. The make-up effects are satisfyingly gory.
While the story is not all there, Prince of Darkness is worth a watch, especially around the Halloween season. I just wish Carpenter had given the screenplay more time. It feels like a script that was two or three drafts away from being something. The ending stinger is pretty good, though. Especially if you like ambiguous Inception-like endings.
