★★
Does God Exist? is among the weirdest movies I’ve ever seen. It’s a faux-documentary supposedly comprised of video shot by a French detective, video from surveillance tapes, and additional footage shot by a serial killer.
The killer starts off murdering people in London, where he is tracked by detective Pat Burton (Keith Eyles) and a French detective (Antoine Douchet) who’s documenting his every move to provide training in British methods for his counterparts in France. Calling himself “God,” the killer seems to have strange, supernatural powers, leading Burton to wonder if maybe he really is God, after all. For example, after seemingly dying and being sent to the morgue for an autopsy, he proceeds to come back to life and walk away, much to the astonishment of the coroners. Later, after the action switches to France, “God” mows down dozens of policemen despite being shot repeatedly and suffering no ill effects.
When the reason for his unusual powers is finally revealed, well… it’s a bit silly. Without giving away too much, let’s just say the answer hearkens back to other movies you’ve seen before.
And yet… while the final plot twist shows a familiar (if insane) explanation for the goings-on, the way the movie gets to its’ conclusion is highly unusual. Everything about this movie is just plain weird, from the way the movie is cut together from video from different sources, to every little detail. For starters, there’s “God” himself: he wears a trench coat and a baseball helmet that make him look a bit like Franz Liebkind from The Producers . And that scene in the morgue is more than a little odd, as the coroners spend an inordinate amount of time playing with the killer’s penis before he finally awakens. The movie’s also chock-full of scenes where “God” walks around killing people at random, shooting them with what’s obviously just a paint-ball gun.
Sometimes Does God Exist? is funny, and I’m not sure whether that was intentional or not. I’ll give the movie this much credit, though – it managed to keep my interest from start to finish, even if mostly for the wrong reasons.