Kingdom Come starts off pretty stupidly with an obvious premise, slowly starts to win you over, and then pisses it all away at the end. So if you are judging things based on percentage of time that you kind of like the movie, Kingdom Come comes out on top with about a 65-35 cut. But that 35 percent is pretty goddamned aggravating. But, it's the sort of deal that is hard to complain about without spoiling, which I won't do. But buyer beware.
The opening credits roll over sounds of a car crash and footage of breaking glass. A man wakes up in a strange abandoned building with no recollection of how he got there. Eventually, he ends up with a big group of people (10 maybe? Including a young girl) - none of them have any idea where they are or what has brought them there. All of their efforts to escape are fruitless (they can't find any stairs, the halls seem to be an endless maze, and they cannot see the ground from the windows) - and when one guy sticks his arm out of the window he gets bitten by an unseen something. Individually, they start to have hallucinations about past events in their lives... bad past events.
Since the opening of the film (with the car crash) has more or less tipped its hand, you know right off the bat that these folks are in some sort of purgatory. They are basically destined to relive some of the times they've committed evil deeds in their lives, and (I guess?) their ultimate fate will depend on how they react/repent. There's this guy hanging around who seems to be some sort of reaper, and he's got these cool looking demon things to help him take the evil souls. So that's fun.
The internal logic of Kingdom Come is not well defined - you know that they're in some sort of purgatory, but it seems like the rules are pretty loose. Do the demons kill you? Or the ghosts/visions? Do you need to die there to lose your soul? Why are victims there as well? And probably most problematically (and the reason the ending just makes you shake your head) - why are arguably lesser actions treated just as harshly as major crimes? You'll know what I mean if you see it. Regardless, if it doesn't at least kind of irk you, I would guess you aren't much of a liberal politically.
Logic issues aside, it's pretty well done. Kingdom Come has a pretty ambitious story, and ends up being mostly successful for a majority of the runtime. The film looks crisp and the sets look really cool. And's it admirable that they had this awesome abandoned building to use and *didn't* make a found-footage ghost hunting flick. But for me at least, the ending kind of ruined all of the hard work - maybe your mileage will vary.
The poor acting hurts it quite a bit though. Our two leads are not very good - although it becomes less obvious as things move on (maybe you just get used to it?). The supporting cast isn't much better. It's never a good sign when the little kid is one of your best actors. Our reaper guy is pretty fun though - but still not a good actor in the traditional sense. His delivery is like a b-grade Jim Carey - hamming it up just a little too much. But at least he's entertaining. But there is a guy who plays a terrific child molester. You just see him and think "that's a child molester." Not sure if that's a compliment, but it's an effective performance, at least.
The horror elements of the film work out okay. Like I said, the demons that are just sort of chilling with the reaper guy look really good - they've got skull faces covered in gauze with glowing red eyes, and they sort of crawl around on the ground. They are really well done, and are easily the highlight of the film. There isn't much gore to speak of - a couple of splatters here and there, and one sort of zombie-ish attack, but that's it. There isn't much tension in the proceedings either - there isn't any mystery to what's going on, and you aren't invested in any of the characters. (Because of the whole purgatory thing, you assume most of them are morally ambiguous at best, and the leads aren't likable to begin with.) Once you get the lay of the land, most everything you expect to happen happens.
Overall, Kingdom Come works okay aside from the poor, poor ending. (I was thinking of using "infuriating," but that would imply that you were really invested in it in the first place.) It looks good, and if you excuse some of the bad acting you'd probably like most of it. But that ending!
I would not recommend this film.
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