Rachael Leigh Cook

(In French, On Cable TV, June 2021) An intriguing cast is certainly no guarantee of success, and while you may feel bad for skipping over horror film The Eighteenth Angel given its top-billed cast, I can assure you that you haven’t missed a thing. Sure, here you have Christopher McDonald, Rachael Leigh Cook, a young Stanley Tucci (an actor who has aged remarkably well) and Maximilian Schell in a story about a father/daughter pair battling an apocalyptic cult obsessed with hastening the return of Satan. But the execution is soporific in ways that defy prediction. For a film delving into prophecies, satanic rituals, age-old cults and the weight of a mother’s death (much of it against the backdrop of rural Italy), The Eighteenth Angel seems detached, almost entirely uninterested in what it’s presenting. The narrative is dull, and the slow-moving, pedestrian execution does nothing to improve on the substance. While it’s true that there have been many, many, many more similar films since then, it really doesn’t excuse the failings of The Eighteenth Angel. Just ignore the cast and go watch something else.