MOVIE REVIEW : ‘The Seventh Sign’ Winks at Armaggedon

In the heavy-breathing, light-headed supernatural thriller “The Seventh Sign” (citywide), Apocalypse comes to Venice, Calif. But it’s Apocalypse Chic, a Geo Magazine Armageddon.

The movie is full of gorgeous tableaux, supposedly depicting the portents of the Book of Revelations: rivers of blood in Nicaragua, cities of ice in Sodom, all the red moons and dark suns leading up to the big bang.

All this is brought about by a shortage of souls in something called the Guf and will culminate wildly in three events: the pregnancy of pert Venetian Abby Quinn (Demi Moore); a race to prevent an execution that shrivels next to the one in Griffith’s “Intolerance” 70 years ago, and finally, no less than the second coming of Christ, who has the room upstairs. (Disappointingly, candidate Pat Robertson, who tried to film the Second Coming live back in 1982, isn’t around for another shot this time.)

Abby’s fight to save the world is desperate and short-handed, and battling her is Pontius Pilate’s old gatekeeper, a neurotic guy who isn’t going to get any rest unless it ends on schedule.

The title of “The Seventh Sign” comes from the same part of Revelations that inspired Bergman’s “The Seventh Seal.” It’s a sign of the trivialization here that when Jurgen Prochnow begins breaking open the seven seals, they look, from a distance, like molasses cookies. At first, it sounds perfect as a black comedy: a send-up of Yuppie religious paranoia. How can you take seriously a story in which only Demi Moore stands between us and the end of the world--and her only ally is Hebrew scholar Avi (Manny Jacobs), who looks and talks like a teen-aged Woody Allen and lives next door to a hysterical Hassidic rabbi?

There’s a scene here in which a table of cardinals is informed that the Apocalypse won’t really occur that week--and one of them says: “Good. I’ll tell His Holiness. He’ll be so relieved.” The writers are actually trying for a laugh on that line, but most of the time they play it disconcertingly straight, as if they’re trying to out-”Omen” “The Exorcist.”

Only Jacobs consistently goes for humor, and he gives the only real good performance, though it would be nice to say a word, too, for John Heard as a caustic priest and John Taylor, a 20-year-old with Downs Syndrome, as the execution victim.

Avi’s wisecracks liven up these Cosmopolitan metaphysics. They help counterbalance the scenes in which Jurgen Prochnow roams the world, leaving a trail of enigmatic smiles, hyperactive sparrows, dead fish and mysterious hailstorms; where Demi Moore offers a New Age variation on “Rosemary’s Baby,” and where Michael Biehn, as her lawyer-husband, speaks as if the only cases he could handle were surfers’ liability suits.

The writers are like the prison warden in their movie: They seem better on planning than execution. But, by contrast, “The Seventh Sign” (MPAA-rated R, for language and nudity) is an extremely good-looking movie. Director Carl Schultz (“Careful, He Might Hear You”) and cinematographer Juan-Ruiz Anchia have filled it with ravishing vistas, perfectly balanced, flooded with clear light.

Their visuals are so extraordinary, it’s almost irritating. Why are they wasting themselves on such perversely empty and misbegotten material? When you’re anticipating the end of the world, you ought to be filled with philosophic dread or holy grief. Here, you’d rather be eating the molasses cookies.