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Oh boy! It's Legion! Ever since I first saw a preview for this, in front of some actually good movie, I think maybe it was District 9, I have been waiting with excitement for the day of its release on DVD, and that day is today!* I'm sure I'm going to be horribly disappointed, but seriously, the first trailer in particular looked like just a bunch of COMPLETELY unrelated clips from 4 or 5 different bad retro-80s horror movies. These are probably the only watchable scenes in what's going to turn out to be just 2 hours of boring B-movie actors shouting at eachother and firing wildly at shakycamery but hey. *Today being the day I'm writing this, which thanks to backlog size is months in advance of when it goes online.
We start with a Bold films logo, which, ironically, has a very narrow font width, followed by a quick bible quote and some girl narrating how her religious grandmother told her there used to be a just and loving god, but he got tired of humanity's BS and that's why they live in the middle of a New Mexican dirt farm. After the BS line, we suddenly cut to some screamy buzz cut guy being cast down from heaven, wearing a leather jacket over his wings, at which point he immediately pulls out a bowie knife and murders a nearby dog, causing his magical god collar to come off. Or maybe he was just cutting his own wings off and bad camera work made it look like he was murdering a dog. Anyway, he then breaks into someone's house and raids their medicine cabinet for supplies to sew his wing stumps closed, and then heads into a room from The Matrix just full of rows upon rows of assault rifles. The overall vibe to all of this is like the start of the first Terminator and I'm pretty sure that's what they were going for. Then suddenly he blows a giant cross shaped hole out of the wall with an explosive, and startles too passing cops as he comes out with his two duffle bags presumably full of guns. He fakes letting them arrest them, steals the gun from one, and then the other cop conveniently gets possessed by an angel. We establish that our crazy gun-toting anti-hero angel is Michael because yeah, that's what you call your good guy rogue angel. Everyone does.
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Meanwhile, back on the dirt farm, this is not nearly as interesting a movie. Seriously, $#@% your attempt to actually establish a character or two and ground the movie. This is not what I came here for. Girl is pregnant is all we should need to know to follow the plot. Ah, now here comes that first long scene trailers spoiled that totally was all it took for me to want to see this. We have a bunch of losers in a diner in the middle of nowhere. One of the losers is way too classy looking to be in here is griping about how her daughter is dressed like a hooker. She retorts in fairly profane fashion. Now we cut to some rapper. Guess I have to wait for the awesome old lady scene. I guess we're actually trying to establish our cannon fodder as characters or something. Everyone is just arbitrarily in this truck stop, literally in the middle of nowhere. It's just... endless expanses of dust and this little diner/gas station/gift shop... actually it's a pretty nice place all things considered. Oh hey, garage too. Oh hey, is Preggo's boyfriend named Jeep? I must have misheard his name, but I'm totally running with that. Truck Stop Owner (his father) is expositing at him that he isn't obligated to take care of Preggo since he isn't the father. I actually have managed to absorb enough of the plot to know that nobody's the father. She's pregnant with the second coming of Jesus, and the plot of this movie is that God decided no wait, @%$# having a second coming! Humanity sucks! And at the last minute decides to instead just have like half the population of the world get possessed by horrible monster angels and kill the rest, and especially Preggo.
Also, Cooky notes that they should totally have gotten a satellite dish for their lousy TV so they can get the History channel. As is it was static for a while and now seems to be showing an oldschool test pattern. Someone says "looks like one of those test things" despite the fact that it clearly has "THIS IS NOT A TEST" written across it. It also has an annoying emergency broadcast sound going. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's just to get your attention, then it's turned off and an announcer explains the emergency. Phones are out too... and I swear dude's name really is Jeep. Now another car pulls up and out comes a sweet little old later with a walker. FINALLY. Here's the trailer scene for real now. She sits down, orders a steak in an astoundingly sweet old lady voice, and starts making small talk with everyone. They mention that phones and the TV are out. "Oh don't worry, it'll all be over soon" she says. Then she starts chewing Preggo out about being an unwed mother. "But it's gonna burn." "What?" "I said your %$@#ing baby's gonna burn!" Then she jumps up, bites hooker-girl's dad's throat out, and starts swearing about how everyone's going to die. After having a frying pan thrown at he head, she leaps up and starts crawling all over the ceiling, tossing people around like rag dolls, and otherwise just totally being a frelling Deadite. Eventually one of the two people who spontaneously pull guns out drops her. Now, that scene? That really was all I was asking from this movie. The rest of it can suck as much as it wants, and probably will, but that scene was pure gold.
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So, Hooker, her mom, Rapper, and Cookie all pile into Rapper's SUV to rush dad there to the hospital 80 miles away, and drive into a huge cloud of locusts. Meanwhile, Jeep and his dad (who is played by too-good-for-this-schlock-actor Dennis Quaid). They head back, Cooky recognizes that yeah, it's apparently the apocalypse and suggests someone start praying. Suddenly a cop car pulls out and out comes Michael the Terminangel. They ask to see his teeth, to make sure he, like Granny, does not have freaky angel "shark teeth." He doesn't... which actually IS kinda weird. I guess it's because he's a physical angel who cut his wings off and not a regular person possessed by an angel? Anyway, he's rather awkwardly introduced to the group, but eventually hears a rumbling in the distance, and starts passing around the heavy weapons with no real explanation so that people can properly help fend off God's army of Deadites. They're relatively willing to accept his explanation, and I seriously have to applaud this movie for opting out of the whole panicked screaming for explanations bit. Everyone takes up firing positions on the roof and gets last minute firing instructions because here comes... AN ICECREAM TRUCK. In the dead of night, with its music playing, naturally. This here is the next set piece from our trailers.
So, out of the icecream truck comes... well, an icecream man. In crisp yellow uniform. Suddenly his jaw and limbs stretch out and he makes this weird quadruped charge at them. Quick burst of gunfire, and that's dealt with. Now here comes a whole fleet of cars whose drivers are doing the Silent Hill Head Twitch (yeah yeah, Jacob's Ladder did it first but Silent Hill made it famous). So... now we're an 80s action movie. Everyone's got machine guns and rocket launchers, and we just have a whole ton of cars blowing up. Eventually a few cars finally pull up and everyone stops to watch the totally regular looking people get out, including an 8 year old girl who was clearly attending a birthday party. Terminangel doesn't stop though, he just starts mowing'em down. "They're just regular people!" "Not anymore!" Which sounds like generic dialog, sure, but you need to hear the delivery on that "Not anymore!" It's... really hard to describe, but it just totally sucks any possible budding angst or drama out of the scene. Which again, I am totally down with. This is not a movie that would benefit from any sort of emotion. Anyway, Hooker gets possessed, and drags her parents out to the horde.
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We get a respite pretty much for the heck of it, for Terminangel to explain that no seriously, these people are possessed by angels, not demons. Because God has decided from on high: Screw you guys, you suck! Also Preggo is carrying the second coming of Jesus and humanity gets a get out of doom free card if they can hold off the Deadite hordes until she gives birth. He goes on to say that "something much worse is on the way" which will surprise me if it turns out to be true, I'm really just assuming we're just going to have even more Deadites. Cookie asks Rapper why he just randomly has a gun. The big ol' shotgun kept behind the counter of the truck stop is all well and good, but what sort of weirdo carries a handgun for protection against ne'er-do-wells? It's... kind of a weird conversation really. Dennis Quaid meanwhile is all "hey, just because it's the end of the world doesn't mean you have to starve, anyone want dinner?" Seriously though movie, you don't need to establish any of these characters. I'm not going to stop you, but it's weird for you to be so committed to it when you're blowing away kindly old deadites with shotguns and stuff. So right now the Terminangel is explaining to Jeep (I can't believe that's seriously his name) about how he decided to defect from the angel hit squad because a few people, like Jeep here, are actually, you know, decent people. "You, Jeep. You're the reason i still have faith" is, however, not a line that can ever be taken seriously. Also, these angels are really taking their sweet time between charges.
We even have time for a flashback to Heaven... and yeah, no black eyes or pointy teeth here either. Heaven totally looks like some anime interpretation by the way. Just big black weird monoliths all over shaped like... oh heck. Heaven looks like Lord Kuruku's castle from Unico and the Island of Magic. With dudes in plate mail with black wings and capes preaching morality at each other. Gabriel (the other angel in everything) looks a bit like John Cussack by the way. Anyway, the next morning we've got Hooker Dad outside straped upside down to a cross and covered in big throbbing boils. Mom runs out to him. Cooky's all, IT'S A TRAP and uses his body to shield her from the acidic corpse explosion which... exposes his spine and kills him with a distinct lack of any blood/gore. Also? Hooker's still around so... either that WASN'T actually her pulling dad through the window or... massive continuity error? Anyway, Mom is now kinda having a bit of a breakdown and taking it out on Hooker. I guess this is an acceptable level of emotion to go and include. Oh, and here's someone on the radio finally! Talking about how people are setting up militias to take on hordes of Deadites. Go random goons! The radio is clearly on board with yeah it's the apocalypse by the way. There's no questioning of what's going on like you'd expect.
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And... we STILL don't have another action scene starting up? What the heck movie? I didn't come here for plot! It's almost like you're trying to take your ridiculous premise seriously and tell a story about human nature or something. You can't do that. You can't start with Granny and the icecream man turning into Deadites and then trying to build a serious plot on that foundation. It doesn't work. This is a long pause in the action in-movie too. It's been like 2 days full days now since Angel Siege #1. So hey, now here's some random dude and his little kid driving up, possibly just as plain ol' other survivors. Of course, here's a whole bunch of other people too. Including a random stock car. Which you might know as a NASCAR if you don't know that NASCAR is an acronym. The resulting Angel attack features a bunch of honst to goodness 80s Punk angels, which is great. Also, the cute little kid in the back of the car? Yeah, he was totally possessed. When Rapper runs out to rescue him, he turns to him and says "Fooled you!" in this awesome evil deep voice before ripping out his throat. Hooker runs out to save rapper though, so then Terminangel has to go out and rescue her by using the spark from a gunshot to turn a gas hose into a makeshift flame thrower, and then they run back inside. Unfortunately, Evil Toddler made it in too. So he's all trying to stab Preggo in the stomach with a knife and getting shot and zooming off and they're following a trail of bloody handprints up the ceiling trying to see which way he went and stuff.
So, good news is, baby's coming. Bad news is, there's some loud ominous trumpet blast sound outside. Seems it's time for our final boss fight. But uh... oh hey. That's like the quickest delivery of a baby in anything ever. Seriously, that was "I think the baby's coming" to baby here in like... 1 minute? So... by the rules we've established, movie is now over? It isn't, so we have a plot hole in-bound I guess. Hooker takes baby to show to crazy mom, who we have tied up in the back room because the people in this movie are genre savvy enough to not leave an unattended crazy lady standing around. Ah, OK. Baby now is emitting a circle of protection of possessed people, but is still vulnerable to standard on their own angels. Crazy mom hears this, and being a crazy idiot, grabs the baby and runs to deliver it to the horde outside hopefully in exchange for er life. Terminangel shoots her in the hea because he's not one for @$%#ing around. Gabriel immediately bursts in though, with the armor and wings and sadly no cape. He does however have a big hefty bladed mace which he swings around some, slicing Dennis Quaid's stomach open. Then him and Terminangel have to go and talk though, rather than just have an awesome fight scene. Jeep meanwhile is sent out the back with Preggo and Baby to go find "the prophets." Oh and out in the now impotent possessed crowd we have some weirdo in the back with a bag over her head, which is the sort of nifty look it's weird to save for this long.
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So yeah, the big climactic fight scene that we've been building up for the last half hour is finally here and... it's actually pretty cool. Terminangel has a machine gun, Gabby just has his mace, and his... apparently hard enough to deflect bullets and work as weapons wings. And they get all wire-fighty. Also, woo, it's a WHIRLING bladed mace. That's always a plus with me. Eventually, Terminangel's upon his back telling him OK, that's enough, but Gabby grabs his mace, stabs himself through the chest with an extendo blade on it, which only kills Terminangel, because he went and cut his wings off. Uh... why did he do that again? Those wings are apparently frelling awesome. So his corpse vanishes, Jeep suddenly gets an instant tattoo of divine instructions on his arm, and Dennis Quaid, still bleeding to death in the back, pulls out a lighter that says "Hope" on it and blows the whole place up. This would be a great final sacrifice if it accomplished anything at all. Gabby almost immediately goes and does the whole rippng a hole in the roof of the car which Preggo Baby Jeep and Hooker are in though, and we get one of those scenes. Eventually they crash, Gabby goes flying, and they buy enough time to run to the edge of a conveniently located cliff. Jeep tackles him Gabby over the edge, Gabby pulls a knife when they land, and suddenly uh... restored to being a full angel Terminangel comes flying out of the sky with a sword to deliver a rather literally deus ex machina defeating blow to Gabby. There's a cryptic semi-explanation here where it's like, God was really testing these two which is actually honestly totally in line with Old Testament Petty A-Hole God (and don't anyone dare take offense to that who's reading a review/summary of a movie where angels possess people and rip throats out). So anyway, the who angels wander off, and the human protagonists ride off into the sunrise in a car full to the brim with heavy weaponry. Because apparently they still have to fend off hordes of Deadites and full angels who don't get until he turns 30 or so.
So... yeah. That was actually way more enjoyable than it had any right to be. There is a HUGE lull in the middle sure, but on either side of that they really did a great job of pulling off the crazy mash up of Terminator Vs. The Omen Vs. Evil Dead 2 they were going for. And seriously, the old lady scene alone makes it all worth it. Shame trailers totally spoiled that one. Also a shame that I spoiled it for YOU but... that's kinda the whole deal with these. I can't explain everything going through my head while watching a movie without spoiling everything spoilable. That's... kinda the point even.
