The Seventh Sign from director Carl Schultz is a very interesting movie. There are some gorgeous shots, some great acting – especially from a young Demi Moore in one of her earlier starring roles and it’s fairly suspenseful. Unfortunately the ending is a bit of a bummer and the movie kind of jumps all over the place.

Moore stars as Abby Quinn, a young woman who along with her lawyer husband Russell (Michael Biehn), is expecting her first child. We don’t get all the details, but we find out pretty quickly that she’s been pregnant before but something happened that resulted in her losing the baby. Given her past experiences she’s understandably concerned for her child and is trying to do all she can to make sure she protects the baby until she gives birth. Unfortunately for Moore there is a lot she has to protect her baby from. As Abby reaches the later stages of her pregnancy signs of the apocalypse begin appearing and along with them come Father Lucci (Peter Friedman) and a mysterious figure (Jürgen Prochnow) who seems to be the cause. Lucci has plans to save the day and stop this figure (I think) while Abby ends up stuck in the middle of sorts.

Lucci’s whole deal is kind of weird. The movie starts with a town freezing in the Middle East and people seem to think this means certain doom is on the way. Lucci though, he’s like “Nah, technology, probably.” That’s a little weird, right? He’s a man of the church, shouldn’t he be all about spotting the doom?

I am not a religious person and I’ve never pretended to be. I don’t know much about the Bible and what it says. If you were to quiz me on it I would surely fail. What that means is there are probably lots of references and imagery that relates directly to the Bible within The Seventh Sign that meant nothing to me and just went over my head. Either that or I made my own meaning with what I saw. My point is that despite there being a heavy religious context within The Seventh Sign you don’t actually need to be religious to enjoy the movie, but maybe it’s easier to understand if you are? Because I enjoyed it for the most part, but there were a lot of parts that didn’t make sense.

There’s all these things going on around the world – multiple earthquakes, rivers of blood and so on – and yet not one seems to be talking about any of it. I understand this isn’t a disaster movie but the world seems to be coming to an end so I kind of expect people to be doing whatever they can to survive. Instead everyone is acting pretty normal. I’m not sure there should be mass panic exactly, at least not from the jump, but these crazy events happening so close together should be acknowledged, right? I would think some red flags are being raised.

A lot of what happens doesn’t particularly make a lot of sense. Like there are Hebrew code letters that seem to pop up just before something terrible happens and we get the idea that they factor into it all, but never the details. There are lots of little things like this throughout the film. Different things are hinted at but never fully explained or explored. Maybe that’s the idea and it’s supposed to be left for you to figure out and draw your own conclusions.

So while the movie isn’t the clearest linear story, it is enjoyable in large part due to the performance from Moore. She has a ton of energy and natural charm. There’s no question when watching this movie that she’s a star. Even when the movie is moving through it’s weird, confusing moments you’re hooked because Moore is pulling you in. She’ll do anything to protect her baby and you want to watch her do so.

The Seventh Sign is a gorgeous looking movie. Juan Ruiz Anchía serves as the DP and just like he did a number of times before this film and a number of times since, he provides some wonderful photography. There’s one scene in particular that stands out to me. Abby is in a church after following the mysterious Prochnow and she begins to experience some pain in her stomach. She tries to leave the church and stumbles down and as she does so she looks up and there’s this bright blue light shining down at her. This is fairly brief but it’s an excellent shot.

The Seventh Sign is now out on Blu-ray from Australia’s Via Vision Entertainment. You have to import (JB Hi-Fi has it available) this but it’s the only Blu-ray currently available for the film and it is REGION FREE. And it’s a nice looking Blu-ray. It hasn’t been overly touched up digitally or anything like that, so you do have a few scenes where you can see the spots of imperfection from the film but with that you also retain the detail. As I’ve said before, I’m no expert when it comes to breaking down picture quality, but I know when something looks good to me and this looks good. The downside is this is  a bare bones release, so if you were looking for some special features regarding The Seventh Sign you’re not going to find those here. Still this is the only Blu-ray release available in the world and it looks good and that’s what really counts.

There are better biblical thrillers than The Seventh Sign – Rosemary’s Baby and The Omen quickly jump to mind as less clunky, more coherent stories. With that said I think there’s enough to enjoy that makes The Seventh Sign worth a watch. Yeah it’s kind of all over the place and then quickly tries to tie everything together at the end, but you’ve got Moore leading the way and she’s worth the price of admission.

The Seventh Sign is now available on Blu-ray from Via Vision Entertainment.