Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Legion

LEGION reminds me a lot of some of the horror novels I read in the Seventies and Eighties. A motley group of humans with assorted back-stories (think GRAND HOTEL or STAGECOACH) are trapped in a diner/gas station on the edge of the Mojave Desert and are forced into being humanity’s only defenders against a rapidly approaching apocalypse. Shades of Stephen King and Robert R. McCammon! (And why does the apocalypse always start in the desert southwest?) Oh, and there’s a pregnant woman whose child is the key to saving the world, so our heroes – some of whom will live and some of whom will die – have to protect her until the baby is born and then protect the child.


Yes, you’ve seen and/or read all of this before. One twist is that it’s God who’s going to destroy the world, and the horde of monsters attacking the diner are really humans possessed by angels. And it’s a renegade angel, Michael (played by the always good Paul Bettany) who shows up with a bunch of automatic weapons and a rocket launcher to pitch in on the human side.


Despite the fact that it’s pretty predictable, LEGION is also well-made and entertaining. Sure, you know the formula, but it manages to generate considerable suspense at times. The rest of the cast, which includes Dennis Quaid, Tyrese Gibson, and a number of familiar faces from TV, does a good job, and the special effects are creepily effective. If you liked all those horror novels with similar plots, you’ll probably enjoy LEGION. I did.

7 comments:

beb said...

Sounds like "Gil'd All-Night Diner" only without the humor or the better back story.

Fred Blosser said...

Also sounds like a daffy horror movie from a few years ago (title escapes me offhand) with Christopher Walken as a cranky angel. Maybe it's those Sundays in church as a kid, but somehow the idea of a bad angel just seems, I don't know, wrong. And not very scary.

Charles Gramlich said...

I saw this just the other day and felt about like you do. It as almost as if they cut and pasted the basic story elements from other movies together, but it also worked pretty well. I really liked the lil old lady. "You're all gonna burn."

Charles Gramlich said...

Fred, that movie was called Prophecy'

pattinase (abbott) said...

In trying to remember the title of a movie similar to this one (a police station, I think) I came across a lot of sites about surviving such a thing. Are these for real? http://www.zombiesarecoming.com/2009/07/26/the-outbreak-where-to-go/

There was a pretty good one too when they are in a Canadian radio station with zombies pounding on the door. Oh, if I could just remember titles nowadays.

Jimmy Stewart Jr said...

Denise Quaid, Tyrese, ...sounds like the same group that made the remake for a movie from the 50s. Can't recall the title but the original stars Jimmy Stewartwho is a pilotwith a downed plane carrying a similar group of people stranded in a dessert.

James Reasoner said...

You're thinking of THE FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX, based on a novel by Elleston Trevor, I believe.