For those who like a little added new age hokum with their end-of-days prophecies, this Demi Moore thriller belongs to that post-Rosemary’s Baby lineage of religi’orror (think The Omen, The Exorcist, Beyond the Door) where cosmic forces use innocent people as pawns in their infernal shenanigans.
By the time of this movie’s release, that wave had mostly evaporated after The Omen franchise wrapped up with The Final Conflict in ’81, and outside of a few outliers like Prince of Darkness, biblical horror was no longer the hot commodity it had been in the 70s. That made Seventh Sign a bit of a throwback to the point of being unfashionable, this era belonged to Freddy Krueger and Fatal Attraction. The idea of a pregnant woman realizing her unborn child might be the final piece in God’s plan to end humanity was simply the stuff of another time.
But all things being cyclical, between the X-files and the looming end of the century, the 90’s would double down on its attempts at ending the world through religio-horror, from The 9th Gate and The Devil’s Advocate to The End of Days and Stigmata. More? How about Lost Souls, Bless The Child, The Calling, The Prophesy series, heck – even Dogma.
The millennium was approaching, and the end was nigh.
But this was 1988, and moviegoers weren’t ready for the end of the world just yet, the Coke-and-Junk-Bond party was still roaring.
It opened opposite Beetlejuice and the brat-packer Johnny Be Good, so The Seventh Sign didn’t garner too many disciples in cinemas – but it slowly built a legion of dedicated followers on Video. It found its people while patiently sitting on the shelf with the likes of Witchboard or Poltergeist II.
-Pop
The Seventh Sign arrived on Home Video this week in 1988, after an April 1st theatrical release.