The Becoming 2015 – review

Directors: Geovanni Molina & Marty Marrero

Release date: 2012

Contains spoilers

The blurb on Amazon Prime states: “Angels fall from the heavens. They then turn into Vampires. Only one man can save the world as we know it. The Becoming: 2015 is an explosively campy contemporary vision of ancient End of Days mythology with Vampires.” This is not entirely accurate.

The “angels” are already fallen and are actually demons in service of Satan (Buddy Howard) who, to do his bidding and bring about the apocalypse, seem to possess a person who then seems altogether vampire-like. Are they actually vampires or do they just have fangs and occasionally bite a neck? I guess the answer is that it doesn’t really matter.

astronaut

So an astronaut floating outside the ISS notices something odd out there (the dialogue was a little indistinct at this point). On Earth Vinnie (Geovanni Molina) is woken as his dogs react to *something* outside. He opens the glass door and is grabbed by the neck and lifted from his feet. He awakens… He lives what seems a perfect life with wife Claudia (Anastasia Kuzu) and kids Steph and Tony. Tony scares his sister with plastic vampire fangs and Vinnie promises to take them camping. They leave the house and Steph goes to get the mail for her parents and is hit by a car, the driver arguing with her boyfriend on her mobile phone.

branded

Steph’s funeral is held. A man passes a cross to Vinnie but he throws it to the ground. As he leaves the cemetery the woman who killed Steph asks for forgiveness but he dismisses her. We see a demon, Satanica (Geretta Geretta), possess the priest (Omar Cardoso), who grabs the cross and passes it to the (vehicular homicide) woman who is branded with a 666 mark from the cross and possessed herself. If that makes little sense, don’t worry, it’ll mean less when we come back to it. For now we’ll cross over to a tattoo parlour.

possessed by Vanity

In said parlour a female tattooist (Dawn Andrews) wants to leave early and her boss (Neil Orlikoff) reluctantly agrees. She goes back to her workstation to continue with the current client when she falls into, what appears to be, an epileptic fit. Suddenly she is possessed by a demon named Vanity and chows down on her client’s neck. Her boss similarly fits and is possessed by a demon called Nemesis. The film never explains why these two are possessed but they are subordinate to Satanica and there to pave the way to Satan’s ascendancy.

asked to kill herself

So back to our possessed (possibly) woman. She receives her boyfriend in her home and has baked him a cake. We see her cut a slice and slip a razor blade in it. In probably the most pathetic murder scene in a film he takes a small piece of cake (smaller than the blade) on a fork, pops it in his mouth, retrieves said blade from his mouth (so it would have cut his mouth, potentially, but nothing mortally significant) and immediately dies. Satanica whispers to the girl to kill herself (so, in this case, possession didn’t cause the loss of the individual and vampirism) and she slits her wrist and writes “the becoming” in her own blood before dying.

showing off fangs

Back to Vinnie. He apparently lost his job two months ago (has the film moved forward two months or was he lying pre-Steph’s death? That isn’t clear). He has pretended to go to work and Claudia sees him in his car drinking. Now bearing in mind that, although he has deceived her about his work situation, he doesn’t act violently or even belligerently due to the brew. Therefore it seems a little harsh that she immediately boots him out until he can sort himself out (hey, later he even passes up a bit on the side because he loves his estranged wife). So, what’s going on?

Jonathan Windt as Gabriel

Tony was born on 6th June 2006 and is therefore the chosen sacrifice to allow Satan to open a gateway to Hell (not that thousands of children will have been born on that day worldwide). Gabriel (Jonathan Windt) comes down from heaven in fetish gear, cuts off his wings with a lightsabre-esque sword, steals clothes (almost ala Terminator) and then has to get Vinnie on a Holy page to save his son and fight the demons. The demons, meanwhile, are making zombies (in one case by putting their blood into shots). There is a meaningless side-story concerning a pimp and his prostitutes. Its all so, well… pants…

zombies

It is ill paced, ill constructed pap. The initial idea might be ok (until scrutinised) but the overall film is just B grade rubbish without enough exploitation or fun to keep us interested. I mean, had Satanica possessed or manipulated the woman to kill Steph, for instance, to break Vinnie’s belief in God and make his protection of his son fraught that would have been one thing. However this wasn’t the case and we meandered through seemingly loosely connected plot elements for no other reason that I guess the filmmakers thought they were cool – for instance, picking up the prostitutes and intimating torture but actually cutting that entire (torture) part from the film and their presence having absolutely no story impact.

That said the film did have an earnestness about it, I can totally see that actor/writer/(co-)director Geovanni Molina believed in what he was doing. 2 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.