Bullet Points: Hellblazers (2022)

The Tubi streaming service isn’t the hero we deserve, but it’s the hero that we need right now. It offers so many fantastic movies of all genres without so much as a monthly fee or subscription. I can honestly say that it is my most used movie/tv streaming service in my home. If only I could get them to pay me to say that….either way, checking out some of their original content was a no brainer for me, and seeing that this one if chock-full of aging stars makes it even more appealing.

Synopsis: Set in the late 1980s, a satanic cult has a singular focus of unleashing hell on Earth. With the help of an ancient incantation, they conjure a demon, and its members are tasked with feeding it the populous of a nearby small southwestern town.

• Cults doing cult stuff: Baseball and football may have offseasons but that cult-life doesn’t. No days off, baby! I have no clue what people in cults do when they’re not trying to raise some world-ending demon from Hell so we just right into this movie with a bunch of hooded morons trying to do that very thing. What makes it even better is that their long-haired leader is played by none other than Billy Zane. He exudes overacting and cheese while reading from some secret “raise the demon book”. The bad part about this whole scene is the promise it offers of some cool Zane action. Unfortunately, he’s barely in the film after this bit.
• The magic of Bruce Dern: If this movie is supposed to take place in the 1980’s then Bruce Dern is far too old to play a Vietnam Vet. There! I needed to get that off my chest early since it was bothering me ever since I saw him wearing that hat. Beyond that, Dern is the absolute man in Hellblazers. He has the best lines, the best kills, and the best way of describing the look of the cult members that I could have possibly imagined. Another actor thrust into the movie early on to give it the shot it needed.

• The Sheriff and his crew: The new Sheriff played by Ed Morrone is a New Yorker who somehow got the gig in this small town. He’s got some demons himself, although we never find out what they are. He’s also working with a couple of deputies who have their own stories that really don’t mean much for the film.
• Kill and eat’em all: It seems like the plan for the film is that the cultists are gonna grab the folks in the town to feed the demon in order for him to evolve into some sort of super demon. The more he kills the closer he gets to becoming an unstoppable killing machine.

• The town is in shambles: Eventually, the cultists make it into the town and start offing folks. They get to Tony Todd, they get to Adrienne Barbeau’s son, and they generally just get killed by a bunch of random characters who we don’t really care about. Still, the town falls apart and you start to realize why they put this film in the 80’s instead of just making it a modern film where everyone is fucking with tick tock or whatever. I normally can’t stand when the stereotypical teens and dumb rednecks show up to get killed but Hellblazers does it right and I was happy to see that demon feed on them.
• A town full of martyrs: For some reason, everyone in town is ready and willing to shoot or blow themselves up for the good of the town. We see a number of characters just jumping on the proverbial grenade to take out a cultist or two.

• The Finale: Most of the third act is the remaining characters trying to figure out what to do or where to go. Cultists are swooping in and killing folks and there is always the threat of the demon somewhere but we don’t get to see much of the demon throughout the film. The hope for the finale was that the demon would be some crazy ass abomination but we still saw very little and the climax of the movie was like a wet fart.

The Verdict: I didn’t have the best time with Hellblazers but there were a few things to like. They made really good use of the actors they brought in. Bruce Dern was fantastic and Adrienne Barbeau and Tony Todd were good for their few minutes of screentime. I wish they had given better deaths to a few of the actors in the film since that can turn a bad movie into a really fun one pretty easily. Director Justin Lee is like a man after my own heart when looking at his imdb.com page, and I think that he’s on to something here. I can’t wait to see some of his other projects coming out and I think that Tubi has a pretty decent flick here with Hellblazers. Is it great? No way. It is fun, though, and I think if the idea of all these actors in one film is a selling point then it will be a hit with you.