Prince of Darkness (1987)★★☆☆☆

I really wanted to like this one. I’d never seen it before, but I love John Carpenter and I like a lot of cult-favorite films! But I didn’t really like this one.

It’s not the worst movie I’ve seen, but it might be my least favorite John Carpenter film. I think it’s the only one I’ve rated below three stars…and I think aside from his Village of the Damned remake, I’ve rated everything else four stars and up. So I really couldn’t get into this one.

There were definitely some interesting things about this movie. The story conceptually is really neat, and mixes science and religion in ways I haven’t really seen done before. There are some really creepy moments. And I think what I LOVED about this movie was the score!

But it was long, it was kind of boring, and I just didn’t really care about anyone except the professor (and Donald Pleasence’s nameless priest). It was kind of cool seeing Alice Cooper. And a young Dirk Blocker. But the scenes just dragged on, especially the scenes that weren’t scary at all. I kind of felt the scarier scenes were cut too short!

I can sort of see why this built up a cult following, but I’m not going to join it. If you’re watching everything John Carpenter for completion’s sake, go for it, but otherwise you can probably skip this.