Julian Sands (The
Medallion, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)) is back as the warlock
and this time he’s looking for six stones that will, you guessed it, bring the
end of the world. We have a team of
Druids battling him this round, namely Chris Young (PCU, The Great Outdoors), Paula Marshall (Hellraiser III), Steve Kahan (The Captain that tries to keep Riggs
and Murtaugh in check in the Lethal
Weapons), Charles Hallahan (The Thing
(1982), Dante’s Peak), Bruce Glover (Hard Times, Chinatown) and R.G.
Armstrong (Children of the Corn, Predator). Quite an eclectic cast.
The thing that’s confusing is we don’t know if the warlock
in this picture is the same one from the first installment or a totally
different one that just looks exactly the same. I mean I guess it doesn’t really matter
because this is completely separate from the previous film but it took me until
about half way through the movie to finally let it go.
Whatever, you don’t need to have seen Warlock to understand what’s going on. In fact it seems like they go by a different
set of rules here. Like the warlock can
fly without making a special solution from a small boy’s fat, the Druids don’t
attempt to use salt as a weapon which was very effective last time, the warlock
uses a skin map instead of someone’s eyeballs to show him where the shit he’s
looking for is and the good guys use magic of their own which kind of makes
them non-evil witches I think.
The tone and look is darker than the first which I dig. This one actually feels R as opposed to the
preceding movie. The warlock does some
nasty shit like he’s birthed as this slimy mound out of an innocent woman, he
rips the hair off of a hitchhiker lady, drops someone from hundreds of feet up through
a glass skylight and others. However to
counteract this more gruesome path the non warlock stuff is cheesy and
bland. Our young hero goes through magic
training but it’s really lame, he’s in love with a girl and her father forbids
the relationship, the boy hero’s father is a corny dad/sensei that knows in his
heart that his son can rise to the challenge, etc.
One particular part that came out of nowhere though that
perked me up was when our hero’s father shoots him with a shotgun. To turn the boy into a fighter and in order
to give him magic powers he must die first.
But we’re not told this until after the fact so when it happens it’s like,
“what the fuck?! Did he just fuckin’
plug his own son at point blank range?
Is he really a bad guy? Where the
fuck is this going?”
The warlock does some weird things in this one that kind of
don’t make sense. It’s mostly the
references he makes. When he turns one
guy into a living piece of art he says, “Picasso. Definitely Picasso.” I don’t think he’s supposed to know who
Picasso is. I mean he calls a car a “carriage”
after he’s born and goes outside for the first time indicating that he probably
has a seventeenth century mindset like the last movie. But he also refers to California as “the wild
west” and pretends to whip out a gun from his hip while saying “happy trails pardners”
like he’s familiar with the American west.
The filmmakers decided to go for the puns instead of keeping it in
character which I’m not totally against because hell, we’re talkin’ about a
magical horror movie here. One last
thing, I don’t understand why the warlock drives across the country when he can
fly. Maybe flying drains his powers or
something but it’s not explained.
Most of the special effects are on par with the first
one. The exceptions are the parts where
objects float or soar through the air.
Man does that shit look fucking terrible in this. The dagger that our hero and the warlock mind
battle over at the end looks like a fucking cartoon.
With that said overall it was pretty good. I’m not sure if I liked it better than Warlock though. The
Armageddon was definitely more horror-ish with a badass villain but the
protagonist stuff sucked. Warlock was less bloody and the bad guy
wasn’t as sadistic but it was a more balanced film. I guess they kinda even out. Good job Hickox. It’s no Hellraiser
III but it’s solid.
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