A friend emailed me a link to rent or purchase Interview with the Antichrist solely on the basis that it looked like a terrible Christian film, which is exactly my cup of tea. In the grand tradition of The Perfect Stranger (in which a woman interviews Jesus) and An Interview with God (in which a man interviews another man pretending to be God), the plot concerns a journalist bagging the perfect interview… with the Antichrist himself, after the Rapture has occurred, so he can hear from old Scratch Jr. in his own words why he has caused so much misery.
The film’s website pleads: “Please pray for this film. We’re in a huge spiritual battle right now with entities trying to stop people from seeing this important movie.” Additionally, it claims that a link to the movie was shared 20,000 times on Facebook before the film was BANNED by the website. Will it surprise you at all to know that the movie was not banned from Facebook at all? Obviously I was excited to see what was sure to be a terrible movie, but it wasn’t until I had purchased my copy and started it up that I learned that it was “written” and “directed” by Tim Chey! Chey is truly one of the worst Christian filmmakers around and I’ve long been a fan. His Suing the Devil is one of my Top 5 Christian films, but I’ve also seen Final: The Rapture, Gone, Live Fast, Die Young, and The Genius Club. Indeed, this movie is perhaps among the absolute worst of his career. It feels like something he shit out over the course of a week with little planning and even less effort.
I had to put “written” in quotation marks above because I don’t believe there was any script for this movie—it’s a disorganized jumble of unintelligible nonsense, repetitive and confusing. I have to put “directed” in quotation marks because almost the entire movie consists of exactly two shots: a close-in shot of the two characters, Joseph M. Rasputin (the Antichrist, natch) and the interviewer Alex Carter, and a second shot from further away allowing us to see the entire film crew for the interview which is likely also the actual film crew for the movie. There are various generic interstitial shots inserted throughout, including aerial footage of cityscapes with fake fire pasted onto the screen to suggest post-Rapture turmoil. In fact, the fake fire combined with the people in the shot clearly unaware they were supposed to be surrounded by fire immediately called to mind similar images in Final: The Rapture even before I learned Chey was the “director”. He certainly has a very specific aesthetic.
Journalist Alex Carter (Aaron Groben) is set to interview Rasputin (Ego Mikitas) in a huge abandoned warehouse, though we are assured more than 2 billion people are watching this interview live. At the start, Carter informs us that Rasputin came on the scene three years prior and has consolidated power worldwide. He has forced everybody to take the Mark of the Beast, which Carter himself has, in order to purchase groceries. Additionally, plagues of locusts, demons, and massive hailstones have ravaged the world. Obviously, Carter’s first question for the Antichrist is: what are you going to do to stop this? Rasputin says he can’t do anything about it. Carter’s next question/statement is that Rasputin has enacted a strict instant death penalty for “simply possessing a Bible”, which has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands. Rasputin agrees with this statement, averring that the Bible is very dangerous.
Carter then asks, “So you admit there is a God?” Rasputin affirms there is and states that he himself is the opposite of Christ. He then describes all of the devious anti-Christ behaviors that have existed in the world up to the date of the Rapture (in 2021), beginning with the response to COVID-19. He asserts that the “media army” spread fear of the pandemic for clicks, which turned to money. He asserts that people foolishly chose masks over God. Rasputin notes that the governor of California enacted a lockdown which included churches; he then cries that churches were not closed even during the American revolution. This is hardly the only time COVID-19 is discussed in the movie. Because it’s so chaotic, the topic is returned to at random throughout. Chey wants to have it both ways, though: on the one hand he asserts that the pandemic is a sign of the End Times as there has not been a deadly pandemic this bad in more than a century. On the other, he ridicules any protective measures as “anti-Christ in spirit”. What’s amazing about this is that Carter and Rasputin later state that a second, more powerful strain of COVID has since come into the world killing more than four billion people! Yet here Rasputin is declaring the simple measure of wearing a mask to be heretical.
You might think that Rasputin, being the Antichrist and all, is meant to be giving wrong information here but in fact the movie treats him essentially as God; Carter sometimes asks him the reason for God’s actions and takes his answers at face value. At one point, Rasputin alleges that the Columbine high school shooters in 1999 claimed they hated Jesus and that they were inspired by the Quentin Tarantino film Natural Born Killers, but these things were never discussed in mainstream media. Carter responds: “So you’re saying CNN didn’t broadcast that because CNN and Warner Brothers are both owned by the same company?” Rasputin nods and Carter is stunned. Yes, yes, the literal Antichrist, you are making so much sense to me!
As the film progresses, the line of attack grows ever more insane—hardly a surprise from the man who has made a point to complain about car alarms in two prior movies. Here, he has Rasputin object that 30 years ago everything was all about the customer. Airlines, banks, and hotels used to be our friend, he insists, but now they are our enemy. This is a sign of the End Times, no doubt about it. He also argues that many professions are “shysters”, trying to defraud customers into paying for services they don’t need. In particular, Rasputin mentions dentists who are always searching for cavities in order to bilk patients out of money. Carter cries indignantly, “My dentist isn’t a shyster!” There is also the requisite complaints about noise pollution. Here, Chey through his avatar the Antichrist goes on a screed about “Harley bikes” which gun their engines “to scare elderly drivers”. He complains about gas-powered leaf blowers, which “made mornings intolerable” and has the Antichrist assert that even he found them insufferable! Texting while driving is another no-no which is why you’re going to Hell, of course, not to mention loving your children. “Mothers are so doting on their little babies,” Rasputin spits, “but where in the Bible does it say to put little babies before Christ?” Yes, yes, the Antichrist, you are so right!
There’s more. He references people scamming the elderly in particular, specifically the classic scam where the scammer says they videotaped you masturbating and demands payment in BitCoin. You know, that old scam. Carter pipes in with the suggestion of the “soft-core porn” of Victoria’s Secret in the mall. Rasputin whines about Netflix and television generally, claiming that people “loved watching Spider-Man more than going to church!” On that topic, he complains that super-hero movies became popular but none of them were about Jesus, who you would think would be the best super-hero of them all! How dare we not put Jesus in the MCU! That’s why we’re all going to Hell!
A lot of the supposed anti-Christ behaviors he references are liberal politics. He decries civil unrest as a sign of the End Times. “Does Portland, Kenosha, Seattle ring a bell?” he asks, referencing places where protests against racist policing raged strongest, but seems to suggest the protests themselves were the problem. It’s okay to smear Jesus, the American flag, and the Constitution, he says, but “hands off antifa”. He also references attempts to defund the police, not acknowledging the long history of racist, extrajudicial killings by police officers which have traditionally gone unpunished. “Not even Nazi Germany wanted to defund the police!” he laments. Well, I’m certainly sold: if you can’t follow the example of Nazi Germany, then who can you follow? I mean, doesn’t this seem like it would be a more potent argument if Nazi Germany did in fact abolish policing? Finally—and perhaps this is no surprise from somebody who believes we should follow the lead of Nazi Germany—Rasputin asserts that hatred of former “President” Donald Trump is Satanic behavior.
The absolute weirdest part of his insane rambling list of complaints about the modern world, however, is when Rasputin asserts that “we kill 100 million peaceful cows grazing in the grass” but grizzly bears and great white sharks are “off limits”. These animals, he assures, do nothing but kill people and children! “Do you see the insanity of it?” he questions. Carter responds that humans did not want the great white shark to go extinct. Rasputin is having none of it. They kill surfers, my dude! We can’t extinguish the great white shark, “but killing 35 billion peaceful mackerel and tuna a year is okay?” he asks. Carter doesn’t have a response to this. Rasputin informs him that the reason humans try to preserve the great white shark is because we hate people, children in particular, and worship deadly animals in their place.
During the course of the interview, the “Seven Bowls” occur, apocalyptic events prophesied by the Book of Revelation. Incidentally, early on Carter asks Rasputin which churches had it right. “I would say most Baptist churches,” Rasputin muses. Essentially any church which teaches from Revelation, the most important book of the Bible. So, for instance, one of the Bowls is the ocean turning to blood. Rasputin assures the viewer that 1/3 of the ocean is already blood, but soon all freshwater and saltwater will also be blood. The Bowls include hundred-pound hailstones, fiery rain, locusts, etc. All of these events are communicated by a pan to the ceiling of the warehouse and a corresponding shot of Aaron Groben with a furrowed brow, doing his best to look upset. I guess Chey used up all his pasting-images-of-fire-over-stock-footage budget in the first few minutes of the movie.
In the end it is revealed that although Carter did not love Jesus enough at the time of the Rapture (“I was too busy playing poker with the guys!” he admits in shame), he has since refused to take the Mark and the one he showed at the start of the interview was a fake! Confronted with this, Carter awaits whatever fate Rasputin has in store for him: almost certainly a swift execution. In fact, however, Rasputin says he will allow the interview to continue for another 10 minutes. Uh… okay? Those final minutes are just more of the same. “Ever wonder why so many young people were smoking [cigarettes] in the last days?” Rasputin asks, devilishly. “Yes,” Carter responds sincerely. Sure, that’s the big question two billion people are watching this broadcast to find out. Chey also spends time having Rasputin complain about a video taken in summer 2020 in which a youth punches an elderly woman passing by without provocation. He brings it up multiple times. “When, since the beginning of history, did you hear of a man punching an elderly woman in the face?” he questions. Yes. This one-off incident in June 2020 is a sure sign that the world is ending.
When he’s all talked out, I guess, given that there is no structure to the proceedings whatsoever, Rasputin announces that the interview is over and saunters off alone. Carter just stares after him slack-jawed. Cut to three months later and we see Carter stumbling around in an alleyway, allegedly starving to death because he cannot purchase groceries without the Mark of the Beast. As he draws his last gasping breaths, he literally says: “Now I know how Jesus felt.” And then the movie just ends, go to credits.
Interview with the Antichrist is stupid, yes. That’s a given when you’re watching the work of Tim Chey; but what defines this movie more than anything is how unbelievably lazy it is. The complete apathy of everybody involved in the production of this garbage really comes through loud and clear. In fact, I’d venture to say that Chey’s lack of effort here is anti-Christ behavior.