El fin de los días

As we approach the turn of the millennium, the Devil seeks to fulfill the prophecies about the birth of the Antichrist, looking for a bride in New York. Directed by Peter Hyams, with a script by Andrew W. Marlowe, this film has Arnold Schwarzenegger, Gabriel Byrne and Robin Tunney in the main roles.

One of the last films of the past millennium, it precisely addresses the end of it and the apocalyptic prophecies about that. It's a quite grim film, which puts the audience in suspense from the very beginning. The dark picture helps to amplify these feeling, with the most scenes taking place at night or on foggy or rainy days in New York, depicted like a real and decadent "sin city". The darkest character is undoubtedly the Devil, but the police fighting against him (played by Schwarzenegger) also has to face his own demons: alcohol, deep depression, lack of faith and lack of self-confidence, in a double combat, physical and psychological.

The film has great action scenes which strangely cohabit with several heavier scenes, almost terror. In fact, this is the major flaw of the film: it lives in a permanent dilemma between terror and action, thriller and suspense. We cannot say it's a horror movie or a thriller, or action. It's a mixture of all, which ends up easily displeasing the public looking for just one (particularly the terror lovers, as the film never gets to scare us truly). The climax is very interesting, makes good use of special visual and sound effects, manages to surprise and not be predictable, but some of the effects (the monster) are so "cliché" and far-fetched that destroy what was good.

The work of the actors is fairly good. This film marks the end of a comedy decade in Schwarzenegger's career, and he seems convincing in his role and doesn't make mistakes, giving another proof of versatility. He wanted, truly, show that it's not only a lot of muscles, and he succeeded. Robin Tunney looks a bit bland and hysterical in the role of Christine. Byrne made an interesting devil, very calm and cold, able to boot chills through the simple look. The soundtrack doesn't stand out particularly, with the exception of "Agnus Dei", it's main music, combining incidental chords with small arrangements of Gregorian chant.

Listen, it's been more than a decade and we don't get movies like this anymore. The movie is dark, doesn't pull it's punches, full of action, VFX sort of holds up. Violence and gore is just the right amount.

I don't know what else to say, it's Arnold vs Satan and it delivers. Arnie gives his best performance of career and other characters don't really matter. Satan is all powerful but in meat body.

Sadly not many people are watching this and it's not popular on Netflix or prime. I had a blast on a weekend watching this with beer and fried chicken. You can do that too!

Peter Hyams' End of Days stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as a fired and alcoholic police officer, who is on the edge of sanity and tries to commit suicide very often. He is now private security guard and traps a mysterious sniper who tried to kill one of his clients. Soon he learns that there are some very bad things going on in the city, and the new millennium is very close..It is the last days of December, 1999.

I really liked the scare department in this demonic little horror thriller from this talented director and director of photography, Peter Hyams. This film is full of effective and very ominous images and scenery and the film is very dark. I appreciate perhaps most the shots above the city and the twisted use of camera up there. That really creates a feeling of evil and that something very powerful and wicked is "above the city" and is about to get power. Hyams once again shows his talent as he has been the director of photography many times earlier in his own films. End of Days reminded me occasionally of Alex de la Iglesia's great horror film El Dia de la Bestia (Day of the Beast), a brilliant mix of black comedy and VERY dark imagery and atmosphere. As incredible as it sounds, this mainstream produced film is that effective, thanks to the talented men behind the camera.

There are some flaws, too, and the most irritating things is perhaps the cliche ending, which I definitely won't spoil here, but is without a doubt there only to satisfy the audience and create the safe and familiar Happy Ending. If this was made 20 years ago, the ending would definitely have been different; it would've been how the director wanted to, not hot the audience wanted to. That tones the otherwise great and exciting finale a little bit down, but fortunately it is not as syrupy as possible. Another negative thing that I can tell is the editing which is very fast, unstylishly and ineffectively fast and restless. Fast edits can be great elements if used right and with skill, but in this film, they are in my opinion gratuitously fast and too plenty. Just watch the action scenes and count how many edits there are in one minute. The editors should have realized that sometimes - and in this case - less is more. These "flaws" are still tolerable especially when I keep in mind how many positive points there are in this film.

End of Days is also very exciting and fast paced. The train segment is great and especially the clock ticking finale when the millennium is about to change, is very skillfully created and hold my full attention. The finale is pretty similar to the finale in Kathryn Bigelow's own millennium related film, a paranoid and effective thriller Strange Days (1995). In End of Days, there are also couple of genuinely frightening, scary, sudden and loud "shocks" that require a movie theatre to fully work. The nightmare sequences are also chillingly original and brought to my mind the great horror classics that even Hollywood sometimes produced. The demon which Christine sees in her dreams is very scary and almost as frightening as the similar character in David Lynch's masterwork Lost Highway.

As a horror film, End of Days works fine and creates an atmosphere that is so rare in mainstream films nowadays. I didn't have any expectations when I placed the VHS in my VCR, and so I was pleasantly surprised of what I saw and experienced. If we stay in the 90's, I could say that End of Days is kind of tamer version of Day of the Beast and without its comic elements. There are comic elements in End of Days, too, but those are not, fortunately, the usual Hollywood one-liners and stupid bits of dialogue. Gabriel Byrne over-acts occasionally little, but many guys who play devils seem to have this problem! He is almost as "cool and modern" devil as Al Pacino in Taylor Hackford's Devil's Advocate, a film which also has great atmosphere but is more restrained and drama oriented.

End of Days gets 7/10 from me. Great work again Peter!

Arnold peaked at the end of the '90s, I guess. He's battled Terminators, Greek gods, bears, alligators, planes, and macho men in fish net clothing. The only choice left is, of course, Satan. So they put together a movie about Satan and gave Arnie the lead.

I think everyone working on this thought it would be much better than it actually is. The script was in development for years and Arnie fought to get it made. It's kind of unfortunate because Arnold gives a fairly decent performance in a film muddled with clichés. Of course, it's hard enough to buy a guy with a body like Arnold being a slob who drinks beer and pizza smoothees for breakfast. Getting someone like Jim Belushi might have seemed more realistic.

Apart from the physicality, Arnold's performance is fine. He cries. He does the emotion scenes well enough - at least well enough to find bearable.

It's the direction that ruins this movie. Peter Hyams is a terrible director and has ruined some very unique films in the past (his most notorious butchering in my opinion was of a 1983 Michael Douglas film called "The Star Chamber" - great premise, awful directing).

"End of Days" is like "Exorcist" meets every supernatural thriller ever made. On top of that, Gabriel Byrne should be more menacing. Robin Tunney should be less butch-looking. The direction shouldn't feel like some low-grade TV commercial - all style, no substance.

Is the movie terrible? No. It's not as bad as everyone made it out to be. But it's pretty much the definition of "mediocre." Do I own it on DVD? Hell yeah. It's an Arnold movie - it's an automatic must-buy. But if you're not a fan of Arnie, I wouldn't recommend it - at all. It pretty much feels like any average made-for-TV scary-flick - with even worse direction.

The only other good aspect of this film was that it brought Axl Rose out of seclusion to record his first original song in seven years with a new incarnation of Guns N' Roses. The song, "Oh My God," didn't do too well with the critics. A bit of a shame, really. I dug it. It also fits the industrial, edgy tone of the film.

END OF DAYS / (1999) **1/2 (out of four)

By Blake French:

"End of Days" is the first movie to seriously argue that "666" the numerical sign of the devil, is actually a 999 upside-down. Since the film was first released in 1999, the movie could not resist to throw in that little contrivance. What can you expect from a movie when its premise is based on the concept that once every thousand years if Satan impregnates a woman during the hour from 11 p.m. to 12 a.m. on the last day of the millennium, she will give birth to the anti-Christ who will bring the world to an end? I am already thinking that the movie is vulnerable to logic (is the time given in Eastern Standard?) and it will make its own limitations at the convenience of plot. "End of Days" is particularly graphic in its use of violence, but never really scares us, even with such a horrifying premise like the end of humanity.

Arnold Schwarzenegger has not made a good movie in a long time. First "Jingle all the Way," then "Batman & Robin," now we have a movie that bounces back and forth between action and concept. There are the standard "action movie scenes," where a person sways from a helicopter in mid air, where a chase scene takes place at incredible heights, where someone grasps to a high window ledge, where a subway train crashes, where a massive fire erupts in Manhattan, and so on. There are also the false shocko moments followed with a sudden burst of loud, startling music: the its just a cat scene, its just another cop scene, its just a dream scene, its just your imagination scene, he's not really dead scene, and its just maggots suddenly growing out of an apple scene. The movie is also bound by philosophy. The action is focused towards Schwarzenegger saving the world, but he cannot do that all by himself, can he? Sure he can, if he can stop Satan (Gabriel Bryne), from impregnating Christine (Robin Tunney), who was born under the religious sign of a passing comet -- and based on her birth twenty years earlier during the sighting of that comet – is the chosen mother of Satan's child.

"End of Days" begins with an intriguing, although plausible, premise. The bizarre events that transpire a few days before the end of the millennium immediately inspire our curiosity. The action sequences are also fine, intensified by thrilling music and a fast paced style. The movie opens on a good note, and the remainder of the action sequences are also quite exciting. The scenes also inspire a few questions. Satan kills many people in this movie, people just like the hero, so why doesn't he just finish Arnold Schwarzenegger off like he does with so many other characters. On the other side, Schwarzenegger shoots the devil, who pulls his shirt up so we can see the bullet holes immediately healing. When using a machine-gun, the ammunition flings the Prince of Darkness backward and puts him down before he attacks again. There are simply no rules to abide by here.

"End of Days" does not have a whole lot of explanation; it plays sort of like your run of the mill action picture with the gimmick of the week. There just is not a lot of true involvement or engagement after the premise. We do care about Arnold Swarzzenegger's character, and Gabrial Bryne is an especially convincing Satan. He is devilish, with fiendish appeal, proving that tranquillity is the most terrifying evil. Al Pachino did an equally diabolical job in "The Devils Advocate," but Bryne is even more terrifying. Robin Tunney has nothing to do but exchange shameless subtext with Schwarzenegger's character. ("You're better than everyone else, just remember that." "I don't want to be better or worse, I just want to be normal.") She is more of a plot device than an actual character.

Excellent convincing set designs appear frequently, especially near the end where the characters wander through dark chambers and dim hallways. Cinematography also adds a nice touch to the suspenseful, mysterious atmosphere, all done by the movie's director, Peter Hyams ("The Relic"). It is too bad such good filmmaking does not have a story fit enough to back it up. One more thing I just have to mention: Why do the cops always show up at the end of the movie, after the action is over. I am getting very tired of that.