End of Days

[baumer]

Do your thing

[baumer]

Why was there a cat in the fridge?, 7 December 1999

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

I was so hyped when I saw the first trailer for this film last year. It was either late in 98 or early in 99 that the first trailer graced our screens for this flick. The producers obviously knew that with combination of Arnold and the Y2K and all the Armageddon stuff, the earleir they could get this out into the public awareness, the better off they would be. End Of Days looked fantastic and I could not wait to see it. But that is where my enthusiasm ends and all cynicism begins. End of Days is one movie that is so short of logic that after the first 20 minutes or so you are laughing and greatly anticipating the next idiotic plot piece to invade your intelligence. End of Days is pure idiocy and it is not even fun to mask the ineptitude of the script, straight up, this is a terrible movie.

Now I am going to attempt to explain very briefly what this movie wants us to believe. It starts in 1979 where a priest in the Vatican looks outside and sees a comet racing over the moon. He goes to an old drawing and it too has the comet over the moon. " The Eye of God. " he says to himself and then rushes into a chamber where the Pope is sitting with his religious advisers presumably talking about what they are going to do on New Year's Eve, and tells him that the child will be born tonight. The Pope tells him he must find the child and protect her. It seems that once every thousand years that a child will be born and that child will be the one that Satan has chosen to mate with so that he can come to Earth and wreak havoc and that will spell the End of Days ( get it? ) So now we cut to a dark hospital where a woman is giving birth and when the child is born, a nurse brings it down to the basement where some spooky looking people are waiting and one of them kills a rattle snake and puts the blood of the snake in the mouth of the child. This is obviously the chosen one and by putting snake blood in her mouth that must mean that she is now protected by Satan and she is now Damien from The Omen. So now we skip 20 years and we meet a buffed up Martin Riggs who is played by Arnold and he is going to kill himself because he obviously misses his wife and kid. Hockney from The Usual Suspects walks into the room and tells him that they have a long day ahead of them and so killing himself is not very prudent right now ( I think Fenster and MacManus and Verbal and Keaton were sick on this day so they didn't come and join Hockney on this one ). So we now know that a burned out Arnold is going to be called upon to save the girl. That's all you need to know because the rest is really just a bad Arnold movie with logic that is so stupid that it defies logic to understand how this script got made. Here are some questions that I have for the writers of the film, and if you have seen this, you'll know exactly what I mean, if you haven't, hopefully it will deter you from doing so.

1) If that guy at the beginning wasn't looking out his window and he didn't see the Eye Of God, would no one else have notified the Pope about this miraculous sight? Was no one else aware of this Eye of God thing?

2) If all of Satan's people knew that this girl was going to be born on this day, were there people all over the world in hospitals waiting for the girl to be born? And that has to be the case because no one knew exactly where the baby was going to be born, so if that is the case then that means that every city in every country in the WORLD, there would have to be one nurse and at least one snake killing guy that would have to be waiting in the basement of every hospital in the world waiting on the off chance that it was their hospital that little Christine would be born in. That is a pretty big following, say at least, what, 5 million kids are born every day, so that means at least 10 million people in this cult that are very well funded and have a proepnsity for catching snakes. And you know snakes would not be too happy to lose their lives that day. And what exactly does the blood do anyway? 3) If this day was so important and this child was so important, don't you think God himself would have taken a greater interest in trying to stop Lucifer from entering Earth therefore negating all that once was? Somehow I think that he would send something more trustworthy that a drunk ex-cop with large biceps. 4) I have a great many problems with Thomas Aquinas. First of all his name. No one ever mentions that his name is that of a great man from the past. If a guy named Albert Einstein showed up and was poking around doing things, I think someone may make a joke about it, or Sigmeund Freud, why not Thomas Aquinas. And next, if this guy was all that the Vatican had going for them , don't you think that he would be a little more funded than he was and that perhaps he would live in a little nicer place than some rat infested-run-down-basement apartment in New York? This guy was trying to save the world and he has no money? I don't buy it. And when Arnold and Lieutenant Wineberg find his place and they are searching for clues, how come there is a cat in the fridge that just happens to jump out at them? Why? I have seen horror movies before that throw cats into the frame just to scare us, but never have I seen a cat that jumps out of a fridge. Why would he be there? How did it get there? Are cats strong enough to open a fridge tp get in? Did Thomas put him there to scare Jerico? Would it not be dead if it was in the fridge? All very good questions with no real answers. 5) If your best friend was kind enough not to kill you and then you saw him set on fire, do you A) let him burn try to put him out C) at least shoot him so that he doesn't feel the pain of burning to death. I would say the answer to that is maybe B but more probably C since he is a raging inferno. 6) If a down and out ex-cop is offered all that God took away from him, why would he turn it down? Does he all of a sudden have faith now? Has God been good to him? Does Satan not tempt him to have a better life? Where is the side to him that wants to say no? I don't buy that either? I don't think Arnold's character would have said no to Satan. 7) How do you kill Satan? You can't. Not with what we have here. If he is impervious to pain and bullets and can walk through fire, then why is it that a whole bunch of bullets can stop him? 8) If Satan can invade people's bodies then why didn't he invade Arnolds way back at the beginning and find out where the girl is?

9) He is Satan, why can't he find her whenever he wants to? 10) What exactly is it that Rod Steiger and all of his people were doing in the basement with all of their computers? Were they trying to track down where Satan was on the computer, or were they reading reviews on the IMDb or even checking their email. According to Steiger, "there are forces at work here that you can't possibly imagine." OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO scary stuff!!

I really could go on and on and on but I'll leave that to Celine Dion. Just saffice it to say that this is one film that has no logic to it and no matter if it is Arnold or not, it is a terrible film. I liked it when he was Dutch and the Terminator and Matrix and Harry Tasker and all those other cool characters that he played. But this Jericho is awful and End of Days is even worse. If you want to have some fun picking apart a film, go see this one. The ten issues that I touched on were just the tip of the iceberg, I'll bet that someone else could pick out ten other silly points to the movie that I didn't even mention, it is that stupid.

End of Days stinks. There is no other way to say it. And I am still really confused:

Why was there a cat in the fridge?

4/10

[RichWS]

This was on HBO the other day. It still stinks.

[IndustriousAngel]

Yep. That's one film you'd like me to watch it? - you'd have to pay me. Not even the fx were any good. Don't ask me how they got Arnold to star, must've been ridden by the devil to sign that contract.

[BiffMan]

Wow, that bad, eh? I've unfortunately got that coming up right after Batman & Robin, which itself was largely the reason I stopped going to Arnold movies in the theater. I hardly even remember this hitting the theaters. Or anything else of his till T3 for that matter. Looking forward to it even less now...

[BiffMan]

"Between your faith and my Glock 9mm, I'll take my Glock"

Still reeling from the after-effects of Batman & Robin, but excited to be seeing another Arnold movie I've never seen before. Not sure why I gave this a miss the first time around in theaters, but I'm sure it had something to do with having seen Batman & Robin, being an obvious Y2K cash-grab, and not looking at all good.

It's certainly not at all good, but it's thankfully not in the same league as Batman & Robin or The Villain. I do have a bit of a soft spot for supernatural prophecy stuff when done well, which unfortunately is not the case here. It's at least a passably interesting underpinning to an overtly action-oriented film with a weak attempt at horror, but they missed the mark at sparking my imagination. Hell, even The Omen III, as forgettable as it was, had a very cool prophecy/discovery angle to it that livened up an otherwise dreary and predictable movie. No such luck here. This movie actively demands you stop trying to make sense out of it and to kindly overlook a massive amount of plot holes and non-sensical character actions. I'd catch myself periodically saying "Hey, wait a minute... that's stupid" but was mostly successful and shutting off rational thought and just going along for the ride.

The supporting cast is adequate enough, they just seem to mostly be going through the motions. Gabriel normally kicks ass in pretty much anything he's in, and while he does have some occasional moments of spark, he largely sleepwalks his way through it. Likewise with Kevin Pollak, who I generally quite like. He has some good one liners and a reasonably decent rapport with Arnold, he's just not given much to do. Robin Tunney is usally very good, but here has sadly reverted to the "dull surprise" acting of her early career. Sven sighting: Sven shows up again as one of the thugs who breaks into Arnold's apartment when he relives the past. He not only survives another Arnold movie, he helps murder Arnold's wife and young daughter. Must be revenge for all those times Arnold's offed him in previous films.

Given how dull the rest of the film was, I was pleasantly surprised to find Arnold turning in a pretty good performance. He's a little wooden (can hardly blame him given the script) but has some honest-to-goodness acting on display. He's pretty dull for the first half of the movie, but shows some of the old Arnold panache from the mid-point onward. Particularly enjoyed his religious debate with Rod Steiger when he brings Robin to the church. Actually got a few smiles and laughs out of that sequence and put me in a better mood for the silly shenanigans of the last half. He also surely set the record for the most times Satan has been shot with projectile weapons in a single film.

Ahnold Quotient - 6

Very few one-liners, little muscle-showing, and I'd probably have gone quite a bit lower if not for the crazy amount of "Aaauuuaaaggghhhh!" going on in this one. Quite possibly the most I've seen in any of his films. Otherwise completely forgettable from an Ahnold standpoint.

Rewatchability - No thanks

Plot holes aside, it's not a particularly cringe-worthy film, but it's also not at all a good one either. I don't feel I wasted my time watching it and was actually entertained here and there throughout. No real point in watching it again and it's not something I would recommend anyone else give a try.

[Maxmoser3]

Honestly End Of Days isn't a bad movie, it's fun and it's not his best but it's sure better than his stuff in recent years.

 

The idea is interesting of a man who lost his wife & daughter, and loses his faith in god, so he meets with the devil played by Gabriel Byrne who does a decent performance as the villain and has some fun lines of dialogue like the scene with him seeing a kid riding a skateboard that mentions the devil and he says to him "hey kid nice shirt" then the kid is like "fuck off" and then the kid gets ran over, and he said "all I said was nice shirt." End Of Days also has some decent effects near the end, and has a cool idea. Schwarzenegger does a great job in here as the burnt out cop Jericho Cane, and Kevin Pollak has some fun moments. Also Robin Tunney isn't annoying or a "damsel in distress" per say.

 

As a whole, while not Schwarzenegger's best film. End Of Days is something different to see Schwarzenegger in, and is actually quite a lot of fun for an action horror film. Grade:B