What in God’s name did I agree to watch. The Oath, which I only discovered was a Mormon movie while desperately googling it to understand what the heck I was watching, is a low-budget faith-based production about some white bearded guy who befriends a hot Indian chick in 400 A.D. America while being hunted by an evil tyrant who looks a lot like a confused Billy Zane.
The time period, by the way, is marketed as “the first Ancient American epic set in the pre-Columbian New World.” It’s based on “a best-selling historical book, which sold over 150M copies,” which presumably is an obscured way of saying it’s based on the Book of Mormon. That’s some clever but questionable marketing there.
Early on, or sort of early on, or at some point in the movie because you really do lose all sense of time watching this damned thing, the woman (Nora Dale) tells the man (writer, director, star, and executioner Darin Scott), “You are boring.”
Very true.
The Oath is a very boring film. Literally nothing happens in the movie’s first 80 minutes other than lots of awkward talking–you know, the way ultra-religious people talk when they don’t want you to know they’re talking about religion–and cheesy, melodramatic scenes of pensiveness. The heavy score is uplifting but generically obnoxious. Scott is not a good actor (I can’t really just blame the writing, because he wrote the movie, too) and is largely insufferable throughout the movie’s runtime. He looks and acts sleepy, though I question whether this is him acting or just how he operates. Scott the director isn’t much better, as The Oath is as lifeless as they come.
The action, which is predominantly shown in the trailers to trick stupid bastards like me into theaters, doesn’t start until 85 minutes in. I know, because I clocked it. It ends, generously, less than nine minutes later. Even worse, to make the action appear intense and well-choreographed, it appears that Scott sped up the framerate. It’s an incredibly cheesy and disastrous decision.
If you’re wondering about Billy Zane, he is indeed in this movie. He’s the villain, and at least seems to be aware that he’s acting in a piece of garbage. His performance is good, but at least it’s cheeky.
Listen, I’m not the target audience for The Oath. I’m a fucking atheist who unwittingly watched a low-budget Mormon movie. But Mormons deserve better than this too, right? They have standards? Expectations of some modicum of entertainment value?
The Oath is truly bad. Boring, tedious, and unremarkable in any intentional way, I only ask you to do one thing: proclaim your oath to never watch this piece of crap.
Review by Erik Samdahl unless otherwise indicated.
