Film Review: Legion (2010)
It’s time for another Apocalypse. In Legion (2010), God sends his angels to kill Humankind, particularly a very special yet unborn baby. And how can this be stopped? Guns, of course. Lots and lots of GUNS. Warning: SPOILERS.
Legion starts with a voice-over by Charlie, the special baby’s mother, saying how her mother told her that God grew “tired of all the bullshit” perpetrated by Humankind. Yeah, he tends to do that. Luckily for us, archangel Michael loves Humankind too much to let God kill everyone. (Now, if God had only drowned like 99 percent of the world population or wrecked a city or two, he would’ve been fine with it, but this is just too much) However, God makes his angels wear a disciplinary collar like he’s some survivalist billionaire, and the only way for Michael to get rid of it is to cut his wings. The movie opts for not showing that, choosing instead to show us Michael sewing the resulting wounds (eww) after he breaks into a warehouse. This is a very useful warehouse that contains not only medical supplies, but also loads of guns. When he leaves, he makes a cross shaped whole on the front of the building. This draws the attention of two cops and we get to see our first angel possession. The chosen cop’s pupils dilate and his teeth get all pointy. I have no idea why that happens and it all becomes weirder when we get a flashback showing the angels descending on Earth as basically people with wings.
Meanwhile, at the appropriately named Paradise Falls diner, Charlie is going about her business, unaware that she’s some Biblical Sarah Connor. Jeep, the son of the owner, Bob, is not so secretly in love with her and while he works for his father as a mechanic, he’s also good at carpentry. Oh, and he offers to raise Charlie’s baby, who isn’t his, with her. Do you get it? Maybe not. After all, it’s just so subtle… The only other employee is Percy, who’s an army veteran. Stranded in this mostly deserted place are Howard and Sandra and their daughter Audrey, whose car broke down, and Kyle, who just wants to use the phone. The first sign that something is wrong is that the phone, TV, and radio all stop working. The second sign is the arrival of a little old lady named Gladys Foster.
The sequence with Gladys is just hilarious. She looks like the typical nice old lady until she tells Charlie that her unborn baby is going to burn. Then, she shows her pointy teeth and goes psycho on everyone. Percy throws a pan at her, which breaks her neck, but her head pops right back up. She even climbs the walls with the help of some pretty shitty CGI. Somehow, she manages to sneak up on Howard and bite a huge chunk out of his neck.
Jeep can’t shoot her, but Kyle can, and Gladys just drops dead. Hmm, if she was susceptible to injury, shouldn’t the pan have made some damage, too? When Kyle tries to drive Howard to the hospital along with Sandra, Audrey, and Percy, they run into a cloud of bugs and must turn back. When they return, Percy basically declares the Apocalypse is underway. Except nothing that happens in this movie bears any resemblance whatsoever to what’s described in the Book of Revelation apart from the ominous sound of trumpets. Fortunately for the good folk stuck at Paradise Falls, Michael is there with his guns and some instructions. Unfortunately for the good folk stuck at Paradise Falls, so are the angel-possessed psychos, who manage to drag Howard away before the windows and doors are blocked. However, the angels have some tricks up their collective sleeve and use Howard to lure Sandra outside. He’s hanging upside down and covered in pustules about to burst. Eww! Percy drags her out of the way and gets hit. The pus turns out to be corrosive and burns through the flesh of his back, exposing his spine. ICYMI this movie is a bit violent. To make sure Sandra doesn’t do anything crazy again, they tie her to a chair. After Percy’s death, Charlie confesses she nearly aborted the baby. She changed her mind because she had what was no doubt a divinely inspired panic attack. Later, no matter how much she pretended she could still go back, she felt that she didn’t really have a choice, which made her resent the baby. By the end of the movie, she will be all ready to be a mum and will no doubt be glad that she neither aborted the baby, nor gave it up for adoption. Because of course.
The next person to fall for the angels’ tricks is Kyle. He’s standing guard on the rooftop with Audrey, who can handle guns because she dated a gun nut marine (wait, what? how old is she supposed to be?), when a man and a little boy show up. The angels, who act like they’re in Mad Max, kill the man and start tormenting the kid. Kyle and Audrey get down to help, but the kid gets possessed, too, and kills Kyle by biting his neck. The angels seem to love their neck bites. Michael saves Audrey by setting his fellow angels on fire, but the little boy managed to sneak into the diner and attacks Charlie. The sequence with the kid is nowhere near as funny as the one with Gladys. We don’t see him climb the wall, just his bloody handprints on the ceiling. He’s killed after trying to attack Bob. With all this commotion, Charlie goes into labour and her special baby is born. There’s still hope for Humankind! Especially because other survivors formed militias to fight the possessed people and one of them is camped not far from Paradise Falls. However, God hasn’t given up, yet. The people possessed by angels surrounding the diner can’t harm the baby, but Gabriel, Michael’s archangel brother, can. His descent from Heaven is announced by, you guessed it, trumpets. By the way, Gabriel had already appeared in a flashback that showed Michael’s inner conflict and made me wonder if this movie is set in an alternate timeline where the Flood or the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah never happened. In the flashback, Michael thinks that while God may want to kill the baby, that’s not what he needs. Because if there’s one thing God loves is being second guessed. Oh, and Gabriel mentions the weak attacking the strong. Does this mean the people being possessed are the meek? So, everyone is basically going around shooting the meek on the face? This movie is nuts.
Anyway, when she learns that they’re after the baby, Sandra takes it, convinced they’ll let her and Audrey live if she hands it over. Before she can leave the diner, though, Michael shoots her on the head. Right in front of her daughter. None of this matters because Gabriel has arrived and he comes armed with sharp metal wings and a morning star. The wings protect him from bullets and other objects and can also be used to slice people open. As for the morning star, it’s not just for crushing skulls – it also spins. Bob tries to stop him, but is severely injured. Only Michael stands between Gabriel and the baby. He tells Charlie, Jeep, and Audrey to take it and drive away. Michael tries to convince Gabriel to stop in a way that probably spawned a few slash fics. It doesn’t work and they punch, kick, smash, and slice their way through what’s left of the diner. Michael ends on Gabriel’s back and he stabs himself to reach his rebellious brother. Holy shit!
However, Bob is still alive and uses his lighter, that has “hope” written on it (seriously?) to blow the place up. Of course, the explosion doesn’t kill Gabriel, who goes after the baby.
After Michael’s death, Jeep gets his prophetic tattoos. Which don’t seem to be in any contemporary language. That’s not very useful unless Jeep also becomes magically able to understand them. Anyway, Gabriel attacks them and Audrey dies. Then Michael, who got both his wings and his collar back, returns to kill him because God is one of those annoying people who expect you to read their minds instead of just telling you what they want. Of course, merciful Michael doesn’t really kill Gabriel and he just flies away. Now, it’s just Charlie, the baby, and Jeep. They find the militia and the movie ends with them driving away as we hear Charlie’s voice-over from the beginning. The last image is of their brand new guns… Hmm, this movie didn’t age very well.
VERDICT
Legion (2010) is a dumb, occasionally problematic movie. The human characters are pretty lame and you end up rooting for them only because they’re up against people who want to kill a baby. However, Legion can also be ridiculously awesome and hilarious. Especially the Gladys sequence and the archangel fight. It’s definitely the most entertaining Apocalypse I’ve reviewed so far.
(After some googling, I found out that there was a sequel series, Dominion, that aired in 2014, which explained some things about the angels and God in Legion. However, I don’t care. If it’s important, it should appear in the movie, not in a TV series 4 years later.)
By Danforth