Soavi has succeeded in making bizarre films in his career and my favourite above them all is Dellamorte Dellamore (aka The Cemetery Man). So the expectations were quite high for this movie. It is understandable that Soavi was finding himself as a director and with Dario Argento the film may end up being interesting at least and incoherent at most.The script was written by Argento with a couple of others and we all know that most Argento's films have quite a weak script and this time it's not different. People who know Argento's films can see his impact on this film and some fans may even like this but for anyone else there isn't much to see.The film would have been so much better with higher quality soundtrack, so if there had been someone like Morricone himself making a few scores for the film it'd have raised the film to a higher level.Secondly the film should be cut to 90 minutes, so easily about 30 minutes could be cut out without losing anything significant. The film doesn't engage as much as it should and i was just waiting for it to end after the first hour.Acting isn't too good either. I wasn't expecting to see a masterpiece and i can watch and even respect a bad movie. But this is just a bland "americanized" horror flick which lacks a sense of style that many Italian horror films used to posses.In overall many fans may like the film but for anyone else it's just a waste of time.

An evil, Devil-worshipping sect, led by their enigmatic leader Moebius Kelly(Herbert Lom)have dastardly plans for Mirian(Kelly Curtis)and it concerns unleashing evil on the world through a sordid type of birth.That's the best I can do to explain this baffling supernatural, surreal religious horror outing from director Michele Soavi whose camera is always moving, capturing the action of every scene. The way an unusual blue water flows in Miriam's house' pipes or the POV of a rabbit as it moves throughout Miriam's abode..Soavi's camera captures such action intensely. There are quite a few bizarre moments in this flick like Giovanni Lombardo Radice's stabbing of a woman, later having her heart found in his pocket in a subway as a looter tries to lift something from his coat leading to his suicide after police surround him after aborting the train. Or a bizarre sequence where Miriam's neck is picked at by a crane. Herbert Lom has the most interesting part as the sect's leader, who informs Miriam of why she was selected to carry out benevolent plans against the world and God. There's a hole in her house's basement with major significance to the plot as it works as a type of gateway. What occurs to Miriam's schoolteacher friend Kathryn(Mariangela Giordano)when her face is "attacked" by Moebius' facial death shroud, and Frank(Michel Adatte), Miriam's confident whose a doctor she depends on as her life is spiraling out of control,when he discovers what the sect is up to(..like Frank, we are an eyewitness to a very disturbing ceremony where a female victim's face is removed so that their leader can gain "new life")are also very strange occurrences within the film. Miriam soon finds herself on her own against the dangers of a sect wielding a power far greater than mankind has ever known.While, at first, I tried to make sense of it all, soon I just gave up and enjoyed Soavi's distinctive camera-work..he really doesn't take an easy way out trying every type of visually innovative trick he can think of to make each scene memorable. And, there enough wildly imaginative ideas at work to keep one from getting bored. Very dreamlike, hypnotic score from Pino Donaggio seems to mesh well with Soavi's style and the film's strange subject matter.

As a director, Dario Argento may very well be a master of the horror genre. But as a screenwriter, he has already proved that, more often than not, he doesn't have a clue. The script he has co-written for "The Sect" is so awful that I am inclined to believe there wasn't any script to begin with - they were probably making it up as they went along. The movie is simply a series of disconnected scenes that were thrown together in the vain hope that they would form some sort of "plot". The result is a torturous piece of schlock that bored me to tears. This one should get 0 out of 4 stars, but I'll change it to 0.5 for the cool "face ripping" scene, and for the fun of seeing an aging Giovani Lombardo Radice in a minor role, ten years after "Cannibal Ferox". Still, it apparently has its fans so you may want to check it out for yourself....

Even more bizarre than Michele Soavi's other films, including "Dellamorte Dellamore" and "the Church". It barely contains a resemblance of a plot, but it's definitely entertaining. Some scenes are very creepy, others are downright laughable. Example: One scene has a woman getting her face torn off by Satanists, another has a rabbit watching television and using the remote control. Why??? Oh well, it doesn't matter, I still love this movie. Not as good as "Dellamorte Dellamore" but far superior to "The Church", and probably "Stage Fright". Check it out if you're in the mood for something really weird.