Hellblazers (written and directed by Justin Lee - Hunters) is an indie small town horror that just about manages to tell its story within the constraints of its budget. With a number of notable iconic actors to be found here, I did wonder if perhaps more money dedicated to the filmmaking process might have benefitted this more. Still, I will admit it was fun spotting all these icons of the horror industry, and despite the limitations I still found this to be an inoffensively enjoyable horror.
Set in the 1980's, Joe (Ed Morrone - Hunters) is the sheriff in a small sleepy town where nothing much ever happens. Fresh into his job, having moved there from New York a few weeks back, he soon encounters the local crackpot, Vietnam veteran Bill (Bruce Dern - Django Unchained, The 'Burbs) who tells him a wild story. He says he witnessed a group of cultists (led by their leader, played by Billy Zane - Zombie Killers: Elephant's Graveyard, Dead Calm) performing a ritual on his land, which resulted in a demonic creature coming out of the ground. With not much else to do, Joe decides to look into this, but soon trouble finds Joe and the inhabitants of the town. The cultists descend upon the place, killing all they come across, in order to feed their bodies to the creature they have summoned. It soon falls to the few survivors, which include among them deputy Teddy (Crash Buist), barmaid Deanna (Danielle Gross), radio DJ Georgia (Adrienne Barbeau - Escape from New York, The Fog), and mechanic Rick (John Kassir - Tales from the Crypt) to try and put an end to the cultists.
One of the noticeable limitations of this movie came with the near total lack of character development for anyone found here. You would think at least protagonist Joe would get some, and there are some little breadcrumbs that indicate this may be the case. The mystery of why a New York cop moved to a small town came up a few times early on in the film, yet there was never any revelation for why, despite feeling like things had been leading up to a reveal. He's almost the most developed character, with perhaps Teddy getting a little bit more. When the death count starts increasing this falls into a real pitfall of no one really acting that sad when people they are supposed to have known all their lives die. It's the usual thing of the viewer finding it hard to care when the characters they are watching certainly don't. As fun as the action scenes are here, it results in a bunch of characters throwing their lives away in desperate last stands for no real reason at all. Sure it played out fun on camera, but it seemed sometimes like characters were determined to throw their lives away at the drop of a hat.
I did enjoy the notable actors here, but it is obvious most would only give token appearances. Zane and the legendary Tony Todd (Scream: The TV Series, Candyman) for instance both only feature in two short scenes each, with Meg Foster (31, They Live) also barely featuring. That isn't to say anyone felt like they were phoning in their performances, in particular Dern and Kassir both gave very enjoyable roles, really feeling like they were the characters they were portraying.
There are plenty of action scenes here, with the cast up against mustard coloured gown wearing assailants. The decision to not give the cultists either faces or voices made them seem like disposable no-ones, but the special effects for gunfire always looked and sounded satisfying. Same can't really be said for the explosions, they are mainly practical ones, but are a bit low in quality. The creature design wasn't bad, but the monster is underused all the way up to the underwhelming final battle against it. It felt like Hellblazers was always just about managing to tell its story, and it felt like it had to make some sacrifices in order to achieve that.
It was fun seeing a group of seasoned horror icons among the cast, and despite the faults there are with this, it zooms along at such a fast pace that they didn't really bother me too much. Hellblazers was a fun action horror that was enjoyable to watch, while in no way perfect (in regards to either originality or basic storytelling), I didn't begrudge my time spent watching this in the slightest. Hellblazers is due for release on 9th January next year, from High Fliers Films.
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