Legion

A version of this review appeared in The Age, June 3, 2010.

The Bible tells us that last time God wanted to destroy mankind, He sent a flood. In Legion, the avenging force is a plague of zombies (strictly speaking, living people possessed by angels) who overrun Los Angeles before descending upon the archly-named outpost of Paradise Falls in the badlands of New Mexico. With Christmas round the corner and It's A Wonderful Life on the TV, it's down to the rogue archangel Michael (Paul Bettany) to defend a small group who might be the final remnants of humanity – among them an embittered roadhouse proprietor (an awful performance by Dennis Quaid), his mechanic son (Lucas Black) and a downtrodden waitress (Adrianne Palick) due to give birth to the new Messiah.

The material may be ludicrous, but director and co-writer Scott Stewart deserves some credit for dramatic flair. Look at how he breaks up the entrance of a seemingly harmless old lady (Jeanette Miller) into six or seven shots, including one of a sinister shadow complete with walking frame. Special praise should go to the sound department, who manage to maintain a foreboding atmosphere even when the special effects fail – since this is the kind of low-budget film where a threat is often heard before it's seen. Merle Haggard's "If We Make It Through December" is nicely placed, and another good tongue-in-cheek moment comes when the survivors succeed in tuning into an emergency radio broadcast: "If you're hearing this, we're getting the first bits of good news since this apocalypse began, nearly 48 hours ago."

In between fending off attacks from the heavenly army there's plenty of time for the cast to ponder the big questions: how does divine wrath square with the image of a merciful God, and why do we deserve to be saved anyway? No meaningful answers are forthcoming, though an anti-abortion message is too blatant to be called subtext. (On the other hand, it's rather refreshing that the human characters are exclusively blue-collar types – not a priest or a district attorney in sight.) Stewart doesn't quite have the courage of his outrageously blasphemous premise, and the ending leaves so many puzzles one can only presume Legion is intended as the first chapter of a trilogy. In part two, hopefully the Almighty won't be so easily let off the hook.