Warlock: The Armageddon

The best new (to me) horror flick I saw last year was Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth so it made me want to check out what else director Anthony Hickox has done.  Truth be told this was the real reason why I watched Warlock.  Luckily everything turned out alright.  This one wasn’t bad either.

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.