End of Days (Blu-ray)

Do you ever think about a film from your childhood or from a time where you memory of it gets a little fuzzy, get the urge to revisit the film, only to have it be completely different than you remember? It happens all the time with me, but few so drastically as this late 90’s Schwarzenegger fronted action/thriller/mystery/noirish procedural/horror hybrid (yes, you read that right, Ahhhnold himself heads this one up!) End of Days. I saw this once in the theater when it released and remember it being a bit of a mess through and through. It’s easily been 20 years since I’ve seen it. What I got this time around was a surprisingly unique, surprisingly well crafted film, a blend of several genres that works much better than it seems on paper. Somehow this biblical apocalypse themed horror thriller imbues itself with a surprising amount action and suspense without quite going overboard with any one element, although it’d be easy to make a case for the action being a bit out of place in the grand scheme of things. In my view, it wasn’t too distracting. What I really liked was the long stretches of the film with Arnold playing the sleuthing detective, which he does with surprising ease here. The look of the film, lots of oppressively dark and claustrophobic sets, also works really well. Sure, it’s all a bit silly and all a bit noisy, but I was genuinely surprised by how much I actually enjoyed this one. Anyone else remember End of Days?