Why End of Days Is My Favorite New Year’s Eve-Themed Horror Movie
Cause sometimes stupid is fun
1999 was a scary time. There was uncertainty in the streets as people prepared for the Y2K bug that threatened to wipe out the world’s technology and send humanity spiraling back to the stone age where we would have to look to The Flintstones for tips on turning our pets into household appliances.
If it wasn’t the nerds freaking out, it was the religious fanatics who, unaware of how decades or centuries work, thought the year 2000 represented the end of an era and a surefire starting pistol for the end times.
Even worse, in 1999 one of our nation’s favorite adopted sons was suffering a near complete career meltdown. Arnold Schwarzenegger had not had a blockbuster action hit in years — leaving the world unguarded against Eastern European terrorists and robots from the future.
Needing to give his career a booster shot and looking to tie in to some of the fervor that surrounded the impending new year, Schwarzenegger sought to make his big return to the world of action films. And what better baddie to tussle with then the ultimate bad guy — Old Scratch, himself?
End of Days is a 1999 action horror film that pits Schwarzenegger against Satan, as played by Gabriel Byrne. Loud, silly and a whole heaping plate of stupid fun, End of Days is the ultimate New Year’s Eve horror movie — perfect for watching as you count down the end of one year and reminisce all the mistakes you made. As the end credits roll and you realize that you’ve just spent the last two hours of the year watching Schwarzenegger trade one-liners and bullets with the dark prince of hell, you’ll ask yourself, “What’s one more mistake?”
Schwarzenegger stars as Jericho Cane, a depressed, suicidal personal security guard who finds himself wrapped up in Satan’s plot to impregnate the young woman destined to be his bride. Robin Tunney, who in The Craft famously compared the Wiccan religion to the field God and Satan play football on, co-stars as Christine York, Satan’s pre-destined baby mamma.
End of Days is the type of movie that not only believes in sound and fury over substance, but pisses all over substance and then goes to have a three-way with sound, fury and substance’s mother. It’s the type of movie that hires Stan Winston to design an amazing looking Satan and then has it appear almost completely invisible except for 45 seconds at the very end of the movie.
Satan does look awesome in those 45 seconds, though — like a cross between the giant worm demon from The Gate and a Todd McFarlane toy that was never made.
Sure, End of Days is not a good movie but that doesn’t mean it’s not a whole lot of fun. Sometimes you want a horror movie that’s going to reach into your soul and shake the very foundations of your beliefs — an experience that’s comparable to eating a lobster for lunch. But sometimes you just want to eat a KFC Famous Bowl and sit on the toilet for forty-five minutes picking your nose. End of Days is a stupid horror movie but it’s my favorite stupid horror movie about New Year’s Eve.
