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| “ | I have sinned. I'm going to burn in Hell forever. I threw away the right to go to Heaven. | „ |
| ~ The Reverend's conception of his own sin. |
The Reverend (aka "the Minister") is the main antagonist of the 2016 horror-drama-thriller-western film Brimstone. He is a fanatic, depraved and ruthless fundamentalist minister, and is the father of Joanna, the young protagonist of the film.
He was portrayed by Guy Pearce, who also played Leonard Shelby in Memento, Fernand Mondego in The Count of Monte Cristo, Kendall Duncan in Bedtime Stories, Peter Weyland in Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, Charlie Rakes in Lawless, Aldrich Killian in Iron Man 3, Ebenezer Scrooge in the 2019 A Christmas Carol miniseries, Emil Harting in Bloodshot and Thomas Clay in Tom Clancy's Without Remorse.
Personality[]
Like many religious fundamentalists, the Reverend is a violent fanatic who interprets the Bible and God's word in his own way: he is convinced that his evil deeds are justified by God's will, yet his wickedness seems to outweigh that of many similar characters to him: he is convinced that violence is the only solution to erase evil and bad thoughts, he mistreats his wife and daughter convinced that women should be subjected to men (thus showing a strong misogynist streak), treats them as needed without raising a finger to help her with the housework, forcing them to perform even tough tasks such as slaughtering pigs and at one point even goes so far as to sexually desire her daughter, convinced that God allows him to commit incest once the young woman has entered puberty, eventually ending up raping her and trying to do the same thing with Sam, his niece. Indeed, his religious fundamentalism is a clear cover to disguise his insane passion for very young girls, and in particular for virgins. He also demonstrates an iron determination, chasing her daughter even years after her escape and stopping at nothing to find her.
He also has a distorted view of love, appearing to desire it (as evidenced by his dying words) and declaring that he loves Joanna, but in fact he does not feel any kind of positive feeling, as he does not feel any remorse when he sees his wife commit suicide. by hanging. He also has no qualms about killing anyone who gets in his way, just to find Johanna and Sam, getting rid of all the people they care about and promising Johanna to punish Sam to atone for her sins. He is also suffering from megalomania and a divine complex, since he believes he is similar to God and is fulfilling his will of him on Earth.
He also has a conception of personal sin, self-flagellating himself with a whip and claiming to be doomed to eternal damnation, but despite this he is unable to blame himself, rather placing the blame on Liz, seeing her and his wife as sinners and stating that she caused him to sin and that she is the only one who could save him from damnation.
At the end of the film, after having flogged Sam, he now declares himself condemned and without limits in carrying out all the atrocities he wants, and reiterates his preference for girls who are still young and virgin.
Powers and Abilities[]
The Reverend is an extremely charismatic priest. He also has considerable physical strength (which allows him to twist the coulter gun Samuel and kill him) and incredible resistance to pain, severe physical damage and fatal wounds (as he survives after being slaughtered and will not show any pain when , at the end of the film, Joanna will throw an oil lamp at him and burn him alive).
Biography[]
The Reverend lives with his wife Anna and their pre-teen daughter Joanna in a rural town in the American Old West. Respected and followed by the members of his community, the man treats his wife and daughter with a severity that leads to cruelty, showing himself authoritarian towards them, refusing to help them with the housework, beating Anna and denying her marital sex. When Joanna's menstruating, Anna notices that her husband begins to take a creepy interest in her daughter, and she confronts him by being punished with more beating and a scold's bridle made to apply to her mouth by the blacksmith. During a sermon, Anna commits suicide out of desperation, by hanging herself in front of all the participants of the canteen. Meanwhile, Joanna gives hospitality in the stable to Samuel and Wolf, two gold diggers who are the only survivors of a dispute between gold diggers that ended in blood. Samuel later kills Wolf so as not to be killed by him and takes the girl's family situation to heart.
The day after Anna's death, the Reverend takes Joanna to church to force her to marry him, being interrupted by Samuel who, angry, tries to kill him with a gun to shoot down pigs but the Reverend manages to easily twist the weapon against the boy, killing him. Then the man rapes Joanna, who she manages to escape the next day.
A few years later the Reverend tracks down Joanna, who has now become a prostitute working in a brothel owned by pimp Frank in the mining town of Bismuth. Here he pays Frank to have all of her girls for one night, but he really wants to be alone with Joanna by making himself known to her and wildly whipping her with her belt. When Liz, a mute prostitute friend of Joanna, intervenes to save her by slashing the Reverend's face, he stabs her with his own knife, but is wounded in the throat by Joanna, who then sets the club on fire and escapes after cutting her tongue and having assumed the identity of the dead friend.
Miraculously surviving the serious injury and fire, the Reverend traces back to Joanna - now officially renamed Liz - now married to a man named Eli, who became the mother of a girl named Sam and who earns a living as a midwife. Initially he introduces himself as the new minister of the church of the community where the young woman now lives who, believing him dead, is understandably surprised and terrified. Later the man consoles a father named Nathan, who accuses Liz of murdering his son (who Liz had had to die to save the mother, as the baby had too big a head to be extracted alive from the mother's womb. ) and wants to take revenge for the death of the child and, after convincing the desperate Nathan to give up revenge, accuses his daughter of being a murderer and deserving to be punished, only to leave.
Later, the Reverend kills all of Liz and Eli's sheep, and Liz believes Nathan is still responsible. Not finding the man, she realizes that the Reverend is responsible, and she decides to go look for him to kill him. She finds her daughter's doll in the man's bed. Meanwhile, the Reverend assaults Eli, guts him and hangs him with his own guts, and then sets his house on fire. Still alive, Eli asks Matthew, his eldest son born of a previous marriage, to kill him to put an end to his suffering, not before asking Liz to take her children to Eli's father.
During the journey, the Reverend returns to attack the three boys, shooting Matthew and killing him. He then kills Liz's father-in-law and, as she and Sam try to escape, he manages to capture them both, tying the first in front of the wide open bedroom door and the second in the bedroom. He then promises Liz to beat and rape Sam and force her mother to watch everything, and Liz spits in his face. After perversely licking his daughter's saliva, the Reverend begins to whip Sam and prepares to rape her, telling her that his soul is now damned and that he is therefore free to give vent to all his most perverse desires and reiterating his preference for very young girls. In desperation, Liz manages to free herself from the rope that imprisons her arms by dislocating them both and biting the rope, and throws an oil lamp at her father who, regardless of the flames that devour her body, says that people believe. that it is the flames that make Hell unbearable but that in reality it is the absence of love that makes eternal damnation truly horrible. Furious, Liz arms herself with the Reverend's rifle and shoots him, knocking him, now lifeless, out of a window.