A Distant Thunder is the sequel to Donald W. Thompson’s entertaining Christploitation flick, A Thief in the Night, and it picks up right where that film left off. Patty (Patty Dunning) wakes up in an internment camp awaiting execution from the evil “Unite” group that’s taken control of the world after the Rapture caused all the good Christians to ascend to Heaven. She’s naturally hysterical, so her friends think that letting her explain to the audience how she wound up in this predicament is the best cure for what ails her.
It's somewhat noteworthy that Thompson doesn’t rely on flashbacks to the first film. (Aside from some split-second shots that act as half-assed premonitions.) He could’ve easily slapped and pasted them in there to save time and money. Instead, what we have is an interesting, if awkward way to do a sequel. You see, the first movie was Patty’s “dream” and this is the actual Tribulation. While I kind of admire that unique angle, the fact is A Distant Thunder just doesn’t work nearly as well as A Thief in the Night.
Likewise, Dunning isn’t half as good here as she was in the first movie. In that film, had a wide-eyed Candace Hilligoss quality about her. Here, she seems to think hysterically screaming and screeching equals “acting”. The constant scenes of characters preaching to the audience fall short of the heights of the first one, too.
I guess it wouldn’t have been so bad if the original wasn’t a surprisingly effective thriller. However, A Distant Thunder is basically the film I expected A Thief in the Night was going to be. It’s pretty bad from start to finish, and not exactly in an entertaining way. Sure, there are some semi-amusing bits like equating the mark of the beast (which all people need in order to buy things during the Tribulation) with having a credit card, and the low-fi special effects for the “earthquake” scene are good for a chuckle. Other than that, this is mostly a dud.
Like A Thief in the Night, the aim was to scare people into joining Christianity. I wouldn’t be surprised if they gained a lot of converts from that film. However, I’m not sure anybody would’ve signed up after watching this this one. I guess maybe they were trying to bore people into Heaven this time around.
AKA: A Thief in the Night 2: A Distant Thunder.
No comments:
Post a Comment