SHADOW OF GOD - Mark Reviews Movies

Shadow of God, Shudder

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Review by Mark Dujsik | April 10, 2025

Exorcists around the world are dying in the middle of the ritual. The self-proclaimed prophet of a doomsday cult returns from death, and a shadowy cabal is murdering any who gets in their way. With all of these elements in place, Shadow of God should be far more entertaining than it is, which is a slightly nicer way of saying that the movie is a complete dud.

Horror movies revolving around demonic possession are fairly common, and despite its initial familiarty, the opening scene of screenwriter Tim Cairo and director Michael Peterson's movie offers a little hope that this one might do something different. We meet Catholic priest Mason Harper (Mark O'Brien), a specialist in exorcisms who apparently works directly for the Vatican (He has the Pope's number or at least that of his closest associate), in the middle of a ritual in Mexico. This priest is so accustomed to battling demons through prayer and incantations that he seems more bored and annoyed, just smoking a cigarette and nicely asking the demonic presence possessing a young girl to cut to the chase, than determined.

This actually is a slightly refreshing introduction to such a character, and once his fellow priest is killed after being flung head-first into a wall by the possessed child, it's also a promising kernel of an idea for such a story. Mason calls his higher-ups at the Vatican, learns that several other priests have been killed while performing an exorcism on this very night, and is told to keep all of this information secret from anyone. Oh, he's also barred from performing a full exorcism while the powers-that-be figure out what's happening, so that's a good enough excuse for the priest to return to his hometown in Canada, even if it makes very little sense that this guy would want anything to do with the place ever again.

After all, his father was the head of a cult, which regularly tortured people, including a young Mason, for sinful behavior and in preparation for the pain and struggles that the father believed were coming. Upon returning to his hometown, Mason has a vision of his father jumping off a bridge, and his childhood friend Tanis (Jacqueline Byers), who had a crush on him when he was younger and helped him escape the cult and seems to really know him in the biblical sense now that he's a man of the cloth, gets a call from the local psychiatric facility. One of her regular patients (She's a psychiatrist, which only matters for this exact setup to happen) also saw a man jump from a bridge and witnesses the body miraculously recover.

This is a very roundabout way of getting to the fact that Angus (Shaun Johnston), Mason's father, is alive again. With a string of several other decisions that make no logical sense (Is it protocol for a Sheriff to bring an unidentified individual to a man visiting the town where he grew up, simply because the stranger has a resemblance to the visitor's decades-dead father?), Mason and Angus are reunited, and the resurrected father warns his son that, while all of his old prophecies were accurate, he was missing one key detail.

It's something along those lines, at least. For what Cairo's script lacks in any theological specificity or plot coherence or characters who say anything much beyond exposition, it definitely attempts to compensate for those elements with a vague, frustrating sense of constant mystery.

Admittedly, the central conflict here turns out to be subversively clever, which makes everything surrounding it even more irritating. The cult has returned, apparently, without anyone noticing. Angus' old lieutenant (played by Adrian Hough) is searching for his former leader, and after being knocked unconscious at one point, Mason somehow ends up with a magical sword that was used in the battle between angels and demons, which is such an important details that, obviously, it just kind of happens in a weird dream sequence. There's a lot that implied in the movie, and if the cheap visual effects offer any evidence, some of that haziness might simply be a matter of the filmmakers not having the budget or the imagination to communicate some of the mystical ideas driving the plot.

The reason doesn't matter, given the result. Shadow of God is a mess, filled with dull characters explaining half-considered conceits about a big twist that should be much more fun than it is here.

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