Trust a Dario Argento presentation to bring us a weird movie. I must admit I'm not a big Argento fan, but I did enjoy 'The Church', directed by Michele Soavi.

The film reminded me of 'Demons' and 'Demons 2', especially. On investigation - as it turns out - 'The Church' was meant to be 'Demons 3', but they decided to make it more "sophisticated" and remove the connection to the previous two films. Regardless, it still felt like a 'Demons' movie.

Centuries ago an entire village was massacred because a girl was accused of being a witch. (Well done to the Church; that's so Godly!). The villagers were buried in a large grave, over which a church was erected "to imprison the demon forever".

We then move to recent times and the magnificent church, which now attracts tourists. A Librarian, Evan, starts working at the church where he meets and falls in love with Lotte (Asia Argento). Their romance moves along quickly, and together they start to unravel the secret of the church.

Strange things start happening in true Argento style, and a group of people gets trapped inside the church. (In 'Demons' people were trapped in a movie theatre; in 'Demons 2' people were trapped in an apartment building). The make-up, props and creature designs are fantastic. There are some gory and disturbing scenes. I actually enjoyed the film more towards the end, as complete chaos ensued, with great practical effects. Parts of the movie also reminded me of 'The Beyond' from 1981.

Would I watch it again? Maybe.

Taking many aspects from other films the church builds a solid film with a decent plot and cinematography and it didn't disappoint overall. However, whilst the plot is good on paper halfway through it loses tension and steam and I found the ending to be a bit of a let-down, although not awful.

Acting wise I'm sure it was good but I watched the dubbed version in English, and the dubbing was quite frankly terrible. I think the girl (Lottie) was dubbed by an older woman which was a bit weird I found.

Scares wise I found it impressive, it included great practical effects and lots of hammy gore. Surprisingly it was meant to be a completely serious film but I still feel like a lot of it is played off as tongue in cheek.

6/10: Good overall and definitely worth a watch for horror fans but there are a lot of issues that I feel drag it down such as the loss of tension in the second half and poor dub work