PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *metaphysical*
A few years after WARLOCK enjoyed good profits, a new production team picked up the concept and entirely reworked it, with no connection to the 1989 film save that once more Julian Sands essayed the malevolent starring magician.
Anthony Hickox, fresh off his two crowd-pleasing WAXWORK movies and the second HELLRAISER sequel, brings a lot more visual elan to the project than did Steve Miner. However, the muddled script by Kevin Rock and Sam Bernard-- neither of whom can boast impressive IMDB resumes-- robs the story of any resonance.
The first film imperiled the world with the prospect of "uncreation," but this time the peril stems from a creation, the birth of Satan's son. It's never clear under what circumstances the Satanic offspring can be propagated, but we get a confusing scene back in Dark Ages Britain. We see a band of druids-- who, some will remember, shouldn't believe in Satan at all-- trying to exorcise a woman who's supposed to bring forth a Satan-spawn. I think they're successful, but a group of righteous Christians invade the druid camp. The Christians despoil the Druids of certain runestones they use to keep demons under control, and this means that, at some unspecified future time, Satan's son can be born again. (The dispersal of the gemstones is clearly Rock and Bernard's clumsy emulation of the first film's fragmenting of the Grand Grimoire.)
Whereas the first film actually did show the spell-book sections in different parts of the country, the runestones seem to be concentrated in one little area despite having been scattered back on another continent. From what I could make out, one such runestone happens to be in the possession of a young woman named Amanda, and Satan's demonic spirit somehow impregnates her through the stone, so that she gives magical birth to The Warlock. He immediately speeds off to different, unspecified locations in order to gather all the runestones. By so doing, he can free Satan from some otherworldly prison, leading to the world's "armageddon."
On top of all that, a modern-day cult of druid-descendants exists in America, though they should have no way of knowing that all the missing runestones will also be on American soil. Druid-leader Will also knows that his adolescent son Kenny (Chris Young) is destined to battle the Warlock at some point, so he shoots Kenny with what I assume is a spiritual shotgun. This doesn't kill Kenny (YOU BASTARDS!) but apparently wakes up his psychic talents, so that Will and his aged buddies can begin Kenny's Jedi training. Kenny, whose biggest problem up to this point was getting with his girlfriend Samantha (Paula Marshall), reluctantly accepts his new destiny.
While the hero is being groomed for his new duties, The Warlock gathers more stones and gratuitously kills the owners in various gory ways. And just to give Kenny's girlfriend something to do, she reveals to Kenny that she's having minatory dreams about a strange man, presumably the evil sorcerer. Kenny blows her mind by revealing his brand-new destiny, but some malign force causes a rain of blood to fall from the skies near them-- though there's no indication that the Warlock is anywhere around at the time.
But the writers aren't yet ready for the big confrontation, so they have one of the middle-aged druids, one Ethan, decide to abscond with the cult's special weapons and try to assassinate the Warlock. How does Ethan know where the Warlock is, and how does The Warlock know Ethan's coming, in order to slaughter the foolish fellow? No such details are important; only burning up more run-time and seeming to weaken the good guys.
More random crap happens. Will talks to Samantha, alluding to some strange circumstances surrounding her mother's death, and suddenly Samantha also displays Jedi powers. From the way Will talks about Samantha's mother and Kenny's, I think it's possible the writers might have toyed with the idea that the two young lovers were related in some way, which might've explained their shared destinies as "druid warriors." Samantha now buys into the whole rebirth thing so completely that she asks her priest-father to stick a butcher knife in her gut. When he can't do it, she immolates herself, and sure enough, she is immediately reborn amidst Kenny and the old druids.
After the two teen heroes bedevil the local bully with their powers, they proceed to have sex in the forest, so I guess any ideas of blood relations were scotched.
Finally the Warlock shows up in Kenny's corner of the cosmos, and they start fighting with magic powers. Two aged druids show up, and just before they blast the villain with mundane shotguns (to no effect, of course), he asks, "Who is the second warrior?" This at least shows he's read the script attentively, so he knows Samantha will enter the lists at some point. Then he loses interest long enough to torture the helpless Kenny, so that he'll point the way to the last stone the villain needs. Samantha shows up with said final stone and lures the Warlock away from Kenny.
Samantha fares no better than Kenny in fighting the Satan-spawn, and so the Warlock acquires the final runestone. Despite the Warlock's having callously murdered numerous people just for looking at him, he doesn't kill Samantha, but just ties her up and launches into his Satan-liberation ritual. But Kenny shows up, and with Samantha's help they screw up the ritual, so that Satan stays in prison. The vengeful Warlock then tries to kill Kenny with the druid knife he got from Ethan, resulting in the movie's only fun sequence, when each of the magicians keep trying to psychically toss the knife at their opponent. The Warlock "dies," but a final sequence suggests that he's still not done. The writers might as well not have bothered, since it sounds like the third installment ignores the events of Number Two.
ARMAGEDDON is one of the stupidest sequels I've ever seen, even beating out HOWLING II. Even the one or two references to occult lore, like the shamanistic idea of "spirit-death," are handled so ineptly that they lack any symbolic content. All of the supernatural killings are equally lame, making the Warlock into a deadpan Freddy Kruger. This is particularly ironic, given a Wikipedia quote in which Sands said he did the role specifically because it wasn't a "slasher" type of horror film. He must not have read ARMAGEDDON's script too closely, but at least he knew better than to get burned again, for in the final chapter another actor took over the role of the mad magus.
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