Perhaps if you like loads of blood-soaked murders, then maybe you'll find some value in this 9th installment of the series, based originally on a Stephen King short story. I was hard pressed to find anything of value here, as the movie was just filled with bleakness and grimness.

Marci Miller stars as Ruth, who escaped from a murderous and demonic children's cult in Nebraska to try and protect her soon to be born baby. Now thirteen years later, she's trying to establish roots in the small town of Luther, Oklahoma with her now teenage son Aaron (Jake Ryan Scott). However, she will soon discover the demon-seed children are there also committing sadistic murders and haunting her with memories of her past.

For me, it all added up to a grisly turn-off, with even the twist at the end fairly well telegraphed. Overall, I would say don't waste your time or money here.

A young survivor Ruth (Marcie Miller),escapes a murderous demonic cult, and thirteen years later finds herself trying to establish a new life with her teenage son (Jake Ryan Scott) in the small town of Luther, Oklahoma. The only job she can find is working as a mechanic. She discovers a beautiful young demon child (Sara Moore) has followed her there and is committing blood-soaked murders that brings back horrific memories.

Based originally on a Stephen King short story. Gore and disturbing scenes are just not enough to secure a "die hard" horror fan. Miss Moore garnered most of my attention. Also featured are Mary Kathryn Bryant, Lyn Andrew lll and Clu Gulager..

This film, or video production, is maybe the ultimate ending of the saga since it is not an ending but a second start all over again. In Gatlin, a long time ago, thirteen years ago if I am not wrong, all the children of the cult that killed all the adults in the name of He Who Walks Behind the Rows were burned in no accidental event but in a willful act to get rid of the cult and the followers of it. We had already been told in one or two of the films of the saga that one actually escaped the fire. In fact, more than one did. The one with the biblical name of Ruth, originally Sandy, was pregnant at the time and she escaped the blaze. In fact, this film says she started it. At least one more escaped, a woman too, a girl at the time, Sarah who is the friendly Diner's boss, a friendly front that hides her real intention: to recapture Ruth and get a real vengeance by having Ruth's son, Aaron, kill his own mother.

The Book of Ruth is named for its central character, a Moabite woman who married the son of a Judaean couple living in Moab. After the death of her husband, Ruth moved to Judah with her mother-in-law, Naomi, instead of remaining with her own people. Ruth then became the wife of Boaz, a wealthy kinsman of her former husband, and bore Obed, who, according to the final verses of the book, was the grandfather of David. Nothing frightening in all that. Ruth is a plain and fair lady who is supposed to be an ancestor of David, hence of Jesus. The only comparison can come from the fact she left Moab when she became a widow and she moved to Judah. But that's farfetched to integrate this into the film.

Aaron is a completely different story. Aaron is described in the Book of Exodus of the Old Testament as a son of Amram and Jochebed of the tribe of Levi, three years older than his brother Moses. He acted together with his brother in the desperate situation of the Israelites in Egypt and took an active part in the Exodus, their liberation from slavery. Moses was the actual leader, Aaron acted as his "mouth." The two brothers went to the pharaoh together, and Aaron told him to let the people of Israel go, using his magic rod in order to show the might of YHWH (God). When the pharaoh finally decided to release the people, YHWH gave the important ordinance of the Passover, the annual ritual remembrance of the Exodus, to Aaron and Moses. But Moses alone went up on Mount Sinai, and he alone was allowed to come near to YHWH. Moses later was ordered to "bring near" Aaron and his sons, and they were anointed and consecrated to be priests "by a perpetual statute." Aaron's sons were to take over the priestly garments after him. Aaron, though, when Moses was delayed on Mount Sinai, made the idol of the golden calf. So that has no value in this film, and that's different from most other films. The Biblical reference is rather valueless. Aaron in the film is not a prophet, but only the voice of a prophet. But then who is the prophet?

Sarah is quite to the point in this film. She was Abraham's wife and she could not provide a son to her husband. So, she gave her own slave to Abraham and a son is born Ishmael. But sometime later Sarah gives birth to Isaac and she requires Ishmael and his mother Hagar to be sent away into the desert with hardly anything to eat and drink, hence, to die. She is the one in this film who adopt Aaron and leads him into the sacrifice of his own mother he has to do to avenge the end of the cult in Gatlin and of the prophet Isaac Chroner.

But altogether these references to the Bible are slightly light in the film we are talking of here. The fate of this vengeance is in the hands of two women and the tool for this vengeance is a 13 or 14-year-old child. The point is that after this final act, what happens? That is not a typical Stephen King ending, like the one at the end of the Dark Tower. The last sentences being identical to the first sentences of the first volume of this saga. There is no circularity with Isaac at the beginning and Aaron at the end. Where is the circularity when Aaron here is brought into the cultish sacrifice of his own mother by a biblical mother of his, who is an adult and a woman, two defects that disqualify her for that role in this saga. And moreover, where is the flock of children that Aaron needs to start his mission on earth which requires killing all the adults of the town, called Luther, definitely a Puritan and very fundamentalist reference. This film misses an important element here: for any prophet to be avenged, you have to have another prophet, and a prophet can only bring a revelation and there could be a circularity if the prophets in this saga had been named after prophets in the Old Testament, but neither Isaac nor Aaron are prophets in the Bible. Of course, Stephen King did not know about all the films that followed the publication of his novel. But I am sure a real circular reference could have been found instead of Aaron. The easiest one would have been Isaac again and thus going back to the beginning, but he would have had to have an executioner to perform the sacrifice of his mother because he couldn't do it himself as the prophet of the revived cult. But has the cult been revived, or has it been buried? All that is author's work and in this film the author's work is deficient. True enough they could have paid Stephen King to do the work, but they probably did not have the money needed to pay the salary of an author like Stephen King.

The best parts of this film are the special effects that splash a lot of blood and most of the time the sacrifice is replayed backward, and thus it reveals itself as a schizophrenic vision in Ruth's mind who is quite obviously the victim of a case of Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, and this explains that, including the fact that the syndrome is transmitted to the son. This has nothing to do with genetics. It is only a phenomenon of the transmission of psychological characteristics from parents to children during the education of children by their parents alone for at least three to six years. Many of such syndromes are transmitted through parental education. That does not mean children should be taken away from their parents and raised in orphanages. It just means education cannot be the same for all children because, beyond all of them being different in mental and intellectual capabilities, they are also different in psychological, at times psychiatric, characterization.

Enjoy this simple film and just read some pages of the Bible's Old Testament.

Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU