Hellblazers

Hellblazer (2022) is a Tubi Original that I watched on...Tubi. The storyline follows a small town where a cult has unleashed a demon from hell. As people start disappearing the sheriff starts investigating the area where the cult resurrected the demon...it may be his last investigation.

This movie is directed by Justin Lee (A Reckoning) and stars Tony Todd (Candy Man), Adrienne Barbeau (Creepshow), Meg Foster (They Live), Courtney Gains (Children of the Corn), Bruce Dern (The Burbs) and Billy Zane (Demon Knight).

This movie has a tremendous cast...and every single one of them is under utilized except Bruce Dern. He was awesome. The comedy overall is pretty good. Dern's entire conversation at the store, and his Purdue reference, is hilarious. The cult vs Dern was outstanding. Todd being on the cover I will say is false advertising. He's in the movie for like two seconds. The demon in this is fairly crazy looking and I say the cult was well done.

Overall this is a very uneven movie that doesn't take itself seriously, but if it did a little bit more, could have been really good. This seemed liked an excuse to put together an awesome cast; unfortunately, they didn't do much with them once they did. I would score this a 5/10 but recommend seeing it once.

This was one of those movies I was sort of half watching while doing something else, but after the first 10-15 minutes I was hooked. Nothing makes sense in this movie. Nothing is ever explained, the extraordinarily bad decisions made by some characters are frustrating. But the thing that really lift s this above is the fact the characters a likeable and very well acted. There are some great characters acted by some recognisable actors. It is a good fun movie, but suffers from falling between the lines of comedy and horror. You never find out the backstory, and the first 10 minutes seem like a life time ago, but it was fun, and sometimes horror movies need that..

I get it that this movie isn't to be taken too seriously, they tried to make it mildly funny at times (and in my opinion they failed), but the story is just too stupid. Too many bad decisions to make it not looking idiotic. For example, why would a cop armed with a 12 gage run away from a hooded villain armed with just a sickle or a crowbar? What kind of cop is that? It's little details like that that made it boring. The cinematography wasn't bad, I'll give them that, nor was the acting although the 'big' names just have a very small role, but the story was just not good. The demon/monster looked okay for a small budget, but scary for sure not. I wouldn't waste your time with this one if I were you.

Within the first 20 minutes there is an event, then a witness of said event describes the event we just saw to the sheriff. Then the sheriff says "Let me get this straight..." and relays the event back to the witness who just described it! Who is writing this stuff?

The premise seemed interesting and with a better script and more gore (this may have been due to budget constraints) it could have been entertaining. As-is it feels like the talent they brought together for this effort was wasted.

I also think this would have worked better as a straight-up horror film. The "comedy" was not funny. Honestly, I would skip this one.

It kinda starts off with a SyFy movie formula but then takes a lot of fun, unpredictable directions. It's good to see Tony Todd and Adrienne Barbeau if fun movies again. Bruce Dern would have ruled in You're Next.