A godless man is recruited by a secret organization who works to combat demonic possessions in order to prepare a new generation in the battle against evil forces.
The Cloth is one of those cheap horror movies that in spite all of it’s terrible, dreadful flaws it has some real pluck and ambition, despite not having the skill nor the money to back it up.
The Cloth is one of those cheap horror movies that in spite all of it’s terrible, dreadful flaws it has some real pluck and ambition, despite not having the skill nor the money to back it up. From the strange first shot of a possessed young woman’s crotch to the incredibly cheesy computer graphics work, along with the utterly incomprehensible plotting and editing,
The Cloth will either be completely unwatchable garbage or unintentionally hilarious garbage.
Things open with said possessed girl’s crotch and soon after the girl herself. She is possessed in typical
The Exorcist setup with two priests, one of which is Danny Trejo (
Machete and about 200 other movies), attempting an exorcism. They chant latin at the girl, throw holy water at her but she has telekinetic powers and throws the two men around the room. Then, freeing herself from her bounds the girl contorts
The Devil Inside-style and kills Father Danny Trejo with her mind or something. At this point the other priest takes out some sort of glowing blue crossbow and shoots the girl and she explodes. Why didn’t they just do that to start with?! The rest of the movie makes about as much sense. It’s a hodge-podge of pieces of
Blade,
John Carpenter’s Vampires, and countless exorcism movies from the 70’s onwards. Jason is the young protagonist who doesn’t believe in God because his family was killed by a drunk driver when he was a child. He’s a sullen, whiny douchebag but he is also part of a sacred bloodline which makes him very important to
The Cloth, a secret Christian organization tasked with preventing “extreme cases of demonic possession.” Jason is given blessed armor to protect him from harm and armed with holy weapons by The Cloth’s armorer Helix. With the guidance of Father Diekmen, Jason must learn how to battle the demonic forces that are rising from hell to possess humanity. Then there’s also the rise of the demon Kasdeya to worry about. Lots of talking! Terrible action scenes! Laughable special effects!
The Cloth is kind of difficult to review. Not because it covers any controversial topics or pushes the boundaries of filmmaking in any special way, but because parts of this movie are completely unwatchable while other parts are absolutely hilarious in their dreadfulness. Kyler Willet is barely tolerable as Jason, an obnoxious douche who unfortunately for us is roped into being the savior of mankind. Perla Rodriguez plays Laurel who until the last ten minutes exists only to explain things to our hero. Unfortunately she delivers all of her dialog in this hushed semi-whisper and I eventually got tired of turning up the volume every time she spoke just so I could understand what she was saying. Don’t get too excited about the featured “names” this movie has either, despite actually being credited
after the director in the opening credits Danny Trejo does not survive beyond the bizarre exorcism scene that opens the movie. Eric Roberts also shows up as one of the leaders of The Cloth but his appearances are brief and for some reason he looks like somebody punched him in both eyes. The rest of the cast is either irritating and quippy or empty suits waiting to be possessed and/or killed off. Even the writer/director Justin Price gets in on the action by playing the villainous demon Kasdeya and he’s kinda-sorta menacing, until his own story renders the character almost meaningless. Also, I do not recall seeing a mention of editor in the credits nor is there one on
IMDb, and that explains a lot, like why this has some of the worst editing in recent history. Some scenes last mere seconds and leave the viewer bewildered as to their purpose, some of the action is rendered absolutely incomprehensible as characters suddenly shift to different positions and poses while the camera is shaken around with reckless abandon, and actors do things in one scene only to do something contradictory seconds later.
But you know what?
The Cloth has some goofy charm to it if you can just allow the ineptitude on display to just wash over you. As annoying as Jason is, his “Blessed Armor” that has been supposedly handed down for generations looks so cheap and stupid that he’d get laughed out of a Renaissance Fair. There’s fun to be had with the ambitious but incredibly cheap CGI, especially the ones that are there to “enhance” what the special demon-killing weapons look like. Indeed these “transforming weapons” are listed in the
IMDb trivia as “a trademark of The Cloth franchise”. What they amount to is taking cheap prop guns and attempting to imbue them with some sort of futuristic look a little like the fancy gadgets seen in the likes of the
Blade franchise or
Priest. The CGI is also all over the action sequences as demons are shot, often exploding random limbs across the screen. The action sequences are shot with an amazing amount of “shakeycam” that makes sections completely unwatchable, before sudden explosions of unrealistic CGI violence slide unconvincingly across the screen in wildly entertaining fashion. As mentioned above, the editing is extremely poor and inadvertently makes some scenes quite hilarious. For instance, upon discovering an entire family has become possessed Jason and Father Diekmen blast the entire family to Kingdom Come except for the daughter. After annihilating her entire family Diekmen suddenly decides to chant latin at the only remaining family member in an attempt to exorcise her. Where was the chanting when they were murdering her whole family? Another great piece of editing sees Jason and Diekmen talking while driving and as the camera switches between framing one of the two characters it’s blindingly obvious that the car is travelling far slower when showing one character than the other. It’s this sheer earnest goofiness that makes parts of the film oddly endearing and fans of b-movie camp will find some entertainment here.
Overall it is difficult to recommend
The Cloth for any
good reasons, just that your milage may vary depending how much you enjoy really badly made, cheesy horror films. If
The Cloth is truly expected to become a franchise as the IMDb trivia threatens, lets hope a competent editor can take the next mess and make a more coherent final product.
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