The Cloth (2013)

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

This is, without a doubt, the absolute worst movie that I have ever seen. There was not a single point along the time line that I had any clue what was going on. Little to no character development, a creepily naive take on morals and the 'other', insanely bad dialogue and acting, and a million laughs for me (my girlfriend went to bed because she was completely lost and is not into awful movies the way that I am). I love the juxtaposition of how serious everyone that worked on this movie must have been and how awful it ended up being! There were so many people that had hands on in different aspects and they could have said, "Ummm, that line was really stupid. Maybe we should have someone come in and give the screenplay a once over." But they didn't! And how many of these people were fully grown adult human beings with cerebral cortices and everything? Most likely every single one of them! No excuses people. I don't care how scary it must have been to be that close to Danny Trejo (love, love, love Mah-chet- ay!).tl;dr: Watch if you love movies that are unintentionally horrible. Plus, Danny Trejo.

IMDb cites the budget for this epic at 4,000,000, but that cannot be. It is impossible to discern where such a sum could be on screen. The camera work and cinematography are at the amateur-hour level. Aside from the much-mentioned head cropping, the picture quality constantly shifts - a scene featuring a redneck couple in a pickup truck looks like it was shot on a non-HD digital camcorder - and character reaction shots seldom match up. The special effects are also distinctly unspecial. For instance, the supposedly important demon emerging from Hell is visually incoherent, as are many of the 'fight' scenes, all of which possess only rudimentary CGI. I rented this in anticipation of a B-movie extravaganza of Danny Trejo and Eric Roberts schlock, but I was robbed! Instead, I was subjected to two thespian non-entities with Danny and Eric making the odd appearance (and I have no idea what Eric Roberts' character was supposed to represent or be doing - probably exactly what Eric thought). Furthermore, the film makes little sense and the conclusion is abruptly reached nonsense, all of which adds to the incredulity regarding the apparent budget. $4,000 I could believe, but $4,000,000? Either the figure cited is a mistake or Danny Trejo and Eric Roberts charge a lot for cameos!

I love a good religious horror or demon possession film. My background as a Christian gives me a certain appreciation for what many critics call hokey sensationalist cinema and B-movie trash. I've seen the good ones ("The Exorcist," "Devil") and I've seen the bad ones ("The Exorcist Tapes," "The Last Exorcism Part II"). Unfortunately, Uncork'd Entertainment's "The Cloth" falls well below the threshold of bad and plunges into the abyss of laughably unwatchable.Cases of demonic possessions are on the rise across the country. A faithless young man (Kyler Willett) is recruited by the Catholic Church into a secret organization of demon hunters. He teams up with a priest (Lassiter Holmes) as they track down the forces of evil and strive to put an end to Satan's stronghold on humankind. I can only describe "The Cloth" as a horribly made Christian film clumsily fashioned together by mainstream independent movie producers devoid of any real religious slant who own an HD camera and iMovie program. Imagine graduates of Roman Polanski or William Friedkin's school of filmmaking being to blame for those "Tribulation" disasters and you get where I'm going with this. Its sexual content makes it pretty clear a Christian audience was not in mind while making the film.Imagine an Asylum film completely devoid of the self-aware humor and wit we've come to expect from films like "Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus" or the more recent "Sharknado." "The Cloth" takes itself seriously all the way to the closing credits. This makes scenes of a priest shooting possessed people with a demon-killing gun as they explode into digitally animated pieces even harder to sit through. As hard as it is to believe, the CGI is worse than anything you've seen in any Asylum movie or SyFy Channel original movie.The one character in the film that I found humorous and likable was the guy who provided the holy weapons to the two lead characters. If the movie was focused on him, it would've been a lot more enjoyable. His British accent and punk rock look and sensibilities added a level of fun to his scenes that the rest of the movie is sorely lacking. The guy wears t-shirts with slogans like "Exorcise Regularly." Need I go into any more explanation?I will say that the scenes of demonic possession which aren't cluttered with bad CGI look good. Whoever did the makeup and practical effects deserve some applause for the most part. The exorcism scene at the beginning showed promise that the rest of the film couldn't deliver.Danny Trejo is featured on the cover of "The Cloth" DVD as if he appears in the entire film. Be aware this is not the case. He is in what amounts to about 5 minutes of the 89-minute running time. Eric Roberts is also named as one of the main actors. He plays a priest and figures into maybe 5 minutes of screen time as well.As much as I hate saying this about any movie, "The Cloth" has absolutely no redeeming qualities. It's a haphazard attempt at combining the elements of much better films like "Constantine" and "End of Days." I hope Danny Trejo and Eric Roberts were paid well enough to justify them wasting their time and talents on this drivel.

Again, IMDb MAKES you give at least one (1) star instead of a zero which it truly deserves. There is no place to begin with this mess of a movie. Have you seen either "Plan 9 From Outer Space" or "Manos, Hands of Fate?" These two movies are academy award winners for BEST Picture compared to "The Cloth." I wasn't even able to set the captions on for this "dog" of a movie. You couldn't hear what was being said half-of-the-time (and I guess you wouldn't want to!). The special effects were cartoonish! And to think that Danny Tejo & Eric Roberts were in this movie. I can see Danny Trejo in this kind of movie; but, Eric Roberts??'!! Don't waste your time with a movie like this. I always swore that before I watched another movie, that I would consult the IMDb. Too bad for me that I didn't. I saw "Jack & Jill" with Adam Sandler and that had a 2.7 IMDb rating (LOWER than this "dog" of a movie) and I thought "Jack & Jill" wasn't really that bad. This movie is Bad! Really, REALLY bad!