Director Russell Mulcahy re-teamed with his Highlander (1986) star Christopher Lambert for the Easter themed thriller Resurrection (1999). Resurrection was an obvious exploitation of the success of Seven (1995) and, as such, has been largely dismissed by both critics and audiences. But being an imitator does not necessarily mean being inferior. Both films are absurd gore driven spectacles whose self-serious tone is meant to disguise the bonkers plotting. Mulcahy is just as good a filmmaker as David Fincher and his film Resurrection can at least boast having a more complex understanding of Judeo-Christian scripture.
Fincher’s visual style, derived from that of Tony Scott’s, may have been singular and even groundbreaking when Seven was released. Mulcahy easily replicates that style and incorporates it into his own aesthetic signature. As with Highlander and Ricochet (1991), Resurrection is a film of bold camera moves around a testosterone driven spectacle that is as self-important as it is campy. Lambert’s character arc in Resurrection mirrors that of his role as Connor MacLeod; even his bizarre, vaguely unaware posturing is imported. So many of Mulcahy’s films are but reiterations of the same themes and classical character types.
While all of this is interesting to varying degrees, what actually works in Resurrection has ties to the horror genre rather than the police procedural. By taking Christian iconography and associating it with gruesome murders motivated by a religious psychotic’s neurosis Resurrection embraces the horror traditions of The Devils (1971), Matka Joanna od Aniołów (1961), The Exorcist (1973), and even The Omen (1976). Resurrection fuses this image complex with the narrative tropes of the post-giallo American slasher only to inject a kind of eighties style super cop into the mix as the protagonist. When Fincher attempted the same with Seven he struggled with the iconography associated with Exodus and was forced to rely almost exclusively on sensationalistic depictions of gory crime scenes.
Objectively, neither Resurrection nor Seven does anything all that radical other than function as tent poles of a short lived stylistic trend. Although Resurrection may be the more complex film in certain regards, it isn’t so much better than its predecessor. What Resurrection deserves is not to be dismissed outright as a lesser copy of a mediocre thriller. What’s frustrating is that even the endorsement of a David Cronenberg appearance and a home video release from Vinegar Syndrome hasn’t helped in the critical reassessment of Mulcahy’s film.
Arguably Resurrection is as much an antecedent of the popular first season of True Detective (2014) as Fincher’s Seven or Zodiac (2007), so where’s the love? Let’s normalize Resurrection as America’s new go-to Easter movie and make it an annual tradition. It would be a perfect world if in every child’s Easter basket there was a Vinegar Syndrome edition of Resurrection waiting, tucked behind a chocolate rabbit and nestled in a bed of colored straw and jelly beans.
