Angels looking like demons

Whenever I find myself laughing out loud at things like, for example, an innocent-looking old woman—who could be my own grandmother with her cropped, curly white hair and frumpy pink sweater—taking a chunk out of a guy’s neck before crawling around on the ceiling and cursing at the top of her lungs, I wonder if I’m a sick, twisted person. But then I hear my laugh echoed by the majority of a theater full of people and I feel (somewhat) OK with myself.

This wasn’t the only time I feared for my sanity while watching Legion. Although the trailer made the idea of God’s mission to exterminate mankind (because once again we let the ol’ man upstairs down) by having his angels possess humans in order to kill the last hope for the species—a baby that has yet to be born—totally terrifying, Legion is far from frightening.

In fact, it’s downright hilarious. For one thing, the overt symbolism (e.g., the diner that the pregnant mother works at is called Paradise Falls) takes all need for the viewer to have any sort of intelligence out of the equation. And the apparent moral of the story—to give your father what he needs and not what he asks for—is nauseatingly cheesy. But Legion is about the fall of mankind, which is supposed to be serious, right?

Thank god—no pun intended—the Lord’s favorite angel Michael refuses to carry out the orders to kill the unborn baby and takes the fall from Heaven in order to protect it. Actually, Michael is the best thing about the film. With his delicious British accent and ripped body, most women in the theater were probably—like myself—hoping he might take his shirt off at some point.

But the lusting stops there. Adrianne Palicki plays Charlie, the mother of whom is supposed to be the savior of the world, and Lucas Black, plays the too-redneck Jeep (seriously, his name is Jeep) that is supposed to be Charlie’s love interest, and they’re attractive on the outside. But their characters aren’t believable. Jeep’s personality is absent and Charlie is whiny and unlikable—though that’s probably a fault of the script and not her own.

The poor script is no surprise, though, considering that knowledgeable viewers are left to wonder if anyone involved in the making of the film has actually even read the Christian Bible. The God portrayed in Legion is not the God of the New Testament Bible. He’s very Old Testament with his I-will-smite-you-if-you-do-anything-wrong, I-will-kill-even-the-faithful attitude. In addition, the mission to kill an unborn child doesn’t sound like a very Godly thing to do.

Really, if it weren’t for the fact that the film is supposed to be biblical, I might call it a zombie flick.
The angelically possessed and the zombies have a lot in common: Both are masses of people that don’t control themselves, both have a taste for human flesh and both are undead. The only difference between the two is that God’s new army has the ability to speak coherently (but even when they do, it’s just God using them as vessels to say what he needs to say).

Needless to say, if you want a horror film that will send shivers down your spine, Legion is not it. The characters are almost completely forgettable and the plot contains no element of realism to ground it. Really, the entire thing resembles a sucktastic version of Dawn of the Dead, so save some dough and go rent that instead.

Legion
Directed by Scott Stewart
Now playing
0.5 out of 5 stars