End of Days (1999)

Dir Peter Hymas

Writer Andrew W Marlowe

Arnold Schwarzenegger, Gabriel Byrne, Robin Tunney, Kevin Pollack, CCH Pounder, Derrick O’Connor, Miriam Margolyes, Udo Kier, Mark Margolis, Rod Steiger.

At the end of 1979, the birth of a girl signalled the possible ‘End of Days’ when she was born with a mark on her arm. Now, twenty years later, and days away from 1st January 2000, an adult, Christine (Tunney) is being hunted by a satanic creature inhabiting the body of a man (Byrne). He needs to find her before the hour before midnight in order to take her, and bare her child.

The only person who might be able to stop The Man from accomplishing his mission, is an alcoholic PI and bodyguard, Jericho Caine (Schwarzenegger), who has sworn off his faith due to a terrible tragedy that happened to his wife and daughter.

The overall story is a little clunky, with some plot points which are addressed early on (Jericho’s suicidal thoughts/The Man is being protected by security) that are never addressed again. Others such as finding people by ‘guesswork’ are a tad unbelievable, even in a movie where a man fights with the Devil.  Some characters become aligned with the antagonist with no prior warnings or on screen reasoning and reactions are extreme to say the least.

The characters are a little clichéd, with Arnie being the protagonist who lives on the edge with nothing to lose after losing his family. While this obviously makes him stop at nothing to save the day too, against the devil of all things! Byrne is fine as The Man, but is underused a little.

Some of the effects are a little dated, and considering it had a $100m budget, it seems misused.

The score is eerie, and complements the film well.

Overall, I tried to enjoy this, having not seen it since I was a teenager, and I didn’t get the nostalgia I was expecting. It was just okay.

2/5