God Told Me To

Spirals into a twisted, unsettling finale that'll have you either rewinding several times or relinquishing your deposit to stomp on the tape. [31 Oct 1999]

Iconoclastic New York-based filmmaker Larry Cohen has always stood apart from the Hollywood crowd, inventing new subgenres of exploitation that are invariably bizarre, unpredictable, and clever, even when they don't quite work. The hugely entertaining God Told Me To, a supernatural psychological thriller that's almost horror, sort of science fiction, is among his very strongest works.

God Told Me To is one of the key American horror films from the 1970s to mine the internally sexual, racial quandaries of a nation beset by one great civil rights catastrophe after another.

Ambitious in scale despite its modest budget, God Told Me To also established Cohen’s talent for getting a lot of bang for his limited buck. As a film about faith, it’s pure hooey, but it’s hooey with a provocative edge.

God Told Me To overflows with such perverse and subversive notions that no amount of shoddy editing and substandard camerawork can conceal the film's unusual qualities.

This is the most confused feature-length film I've ever seen.