[MOVIE] Gala Premiere of The Faith of Anna Waters

The Faith of Anna Waters appears to be an intimidating horror movie from the poster and trailer. I was expecting to jump a few times from my seat but the movie falls short from my expectation in terms of the elements of horror. Directed by Kelvin Tong, this is Singapore first Hollywood horror movie and in USA, the movie title was known as The Offering.

SYNOPSIS OF THE MOVIE

The movie started with an exorcism taking place between a priest (Father Da Silva), a possessed man and another guy. We were told that the possessed man has died after the exorcism was complete. Nothing was further explained.

Scene changed to journalist Jamie Waters (Elizabeth Rice), who upon receiving the news that her older sister, Anna Waters has committed suicide under a mystery circumstances, decided to travel to Singapore to investigate this sudden death.

Together with Anna's husband, Sam (Matthew Settle) and Anna's daughter, Katie (Adina Herz), Jamie discovered a few other mysterious suicides that are somewhat similar to Anna's circumstances and even involve the strange allusions to the rising of Tower of Babel that was reflected in the paintings.

Father Da Silva (Colin Borgonon) and Matthew (Adrain Pang) came into the picture as Matthew see signs of apocalypse when several church website was hacked into and also on the rising Tower of Babel.

The movie ended with an exorcism taking place again, this time between Father Da Silva, Katie (who was the one being possessed), Jamie and Sam. It seems like the demon has been cast out this time round and the risen Tower of Babel dropped back to the original height but was slightly risen again towards the last part.

RATING 3/5

REVIEW OF THE MOVIE

As mentioned in the beginning, this movie falls short of my expectation in terms of the horror element. There's one or two fake/jump scenes that did make me startled but overall I gave this movie a 3 out of 5 because the movie did stick with me for a long time as it makes me read up more on the Tower of Babel and exorcism which I felt is not very common in Singapore.

The deaths in the movie were all associated with this strange symbol (I can't remember what it's called, but I think this is the single common language they are referring to?). All of those who committed suicide were found with this symbol and different form of sickness in them and they believed that they will return back in 7 days as a healthy person.

For Anna, she had Huntington, a neurodegenerative genetic disorder that affects muscle coordination and leads to mental decline and behavioral symptoms. She suffocated herself to death. Another guy medical record shows that he will gradually be blind and it was shown that he dug out both his eyes and died. So there was a lot of gross scenes involving people digging out the organs that was found to have some kind of disease.

Now back to the story of the Tower of Babel.

The people of Babel said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth." (NIV). The descendants of Noah all spoke a single language. The story of the tower of Babel explains the origins of the multiplicity of languages. God was concerned that humans had too much freedom to do as they wished, so God brought into existence multiple languages.

This is the confusing part to me and I'm not so sure how it relates to all the deaths but apparently it is related. As after each death, we see the Tower of Babel in the painting risen. It could carry a deeper meaning with the Faith in God? Like those who don't have the strong faith in God therefore listened to the demon and end their life?