‘The Exorcist’ Meets ‘Blade Runner’: Looking Back At ‘Constantine’ 20 Years Later
At the start of Constantine, the title character nonchalantly climbs over a demon-possessed girl and calls her an asshole to her face. Father Merrin would never.
The Exorcist ends with an exorcism. Constantine begins with our hero immediately lighting one up and flipping the bird. This exorcist is more Kurt Cobain rockstar than pious man of the church, with some compelling tips and tricks that the late pastor himself could’ve used.
Released 20 years ago, and now available on 4K, Constantine was the rare superhero/supernatural horror movie. It was an encore star vehicle for Keanu Reeves following The Matrix trilogy, a comic book adaptation back when Marvel could make a Blade movie, and a glossy studio attempt at igniting a franchise. In the immediate aftermath, critic reviews were aloof to downright scathing as if it were the Madame Web of its time.
Roger Ebert had it on his “Most Hated” list. Fans of the Hellblazer graphic novels were doing the 2005 equivalent of #NotMyConstantine, though it did find a sizable audience for an R-rated superhero movie. (Notably, it outgrossed Blade and The Punisher.) The film has since gained a cult status that has seen a growing critical reappraisal with every anniversary. The rest of us gargoyles and creatures of the night, however, saw the vision from the jump.
Long before the Warrens, there was John Constantine: a hard-drinking, chain-smoking exorcist for hire. In this world, angels and demons exist. Those who cross our plane, dubbed “half-breeds”, don’t play by the rules. Instead of God or Lucifer tightening the leashes, they’ve got Constantine performing checks and balances as he sees fit. These regulations range from flamethrowers to holy shotguns to crucifix-engraved brass knuckles.
The cinematic kick of Constantine’s sermons and exorcisms—especially after 2023’s The Exorcist: Believer fizzled out—is how the movie twists the supernatural and occult into a righteous spectacle. In one scene, John exterminates demons by lighting up Moses’ shroud in front of the Virgin Mary. In another, he enters Hell’s metropolis by staring into the eyes of a black cat. Constantine doesn’t waste time debunking the superstitions, the rules, or the Old Testament; you buy that John casually walks around with holy garments on his person and that cats (traditionally guardians of the underworld) are furry gateways into Hell.
Where Reeves has had dealings with the devil before, here he’s anything but an advocate. He hunts demons as quickly as he disposes of cigarette butts, with the unholy fury of a man in withdrawal. His disdain for the devil is molecular; he hates them almost as much as he hates himself.
Constantine was born with the ability to see angels and demons. It drove him to suicide—a mortal sin, and it’s this twisted paradox that fills him with bile and rage. Among the film’s deleted scenes, Constantine recounts how he was institutionalized before being sent to the church for an exorcism and eventually taking his own life. He was damned. And then he damned himself. If Rick Deckard’s existential crisis in Blade Runner was wondering if he has a soul, then Constantine’s spiritual crisis lies in the parking spot he made for himself in Hell. As the divine Gabriel (Tilda Swinton) puts it: “You’re fucked.”
The role is a far cry from Neo, the ultimate hero who can dodge bullets. Here, Reeves can’t dodge shots from Tilda Swinton and is anything but a good guy. In the opening exorcism, there’s no acknowledgment from John that the victim is somebody’s daughter, or that her soul is at stake. He’s past the point of exorcising for the greater good. He’s simply trying to save his own ass from the rapture. He believes that if he banishes enough demons, he’ll earn God’s good graces.
Enter detective Angela Dodson (Rachel Weisz), whose case involving her twin sister’s suicide presents John with a hail mary at absolution. In this sense, John’s arc is that of Dante’s Inferno, a lost soul slowly coming into the light again. Together with the wayward Angela, they are Adam and Eve seeking redemption.
However, when our main characters cross paths, they don’t meet cute; they meet mean. His every line is an insult, delivered with a deadpan affectation as arid as ash. Where the John Constantine of Hellblazer is an English blonde warlock decked out in a brown trench coat and red tie, this raven-haired version is more fond of black coats and ties loose as a noose. Playing in the superhero sandbox seems beside the point. Reeves instead seizes the opportunity to play Humphrey Bogart and the tough guy PIs of film noir with bottomless scores to settle.
In another deleted scene, Angela looks over Constantine’s rap sheet which lists his height at 6’1”, the same as Philip Marlowe. An exchange at an eatery even sounds like it’s ripped from a Dashiell Hammet novel:
“I guess God has a plan for all of us.”
“God’s a kid with an ant farm, lady. He’s not planning anything.”
And like any hardboiled icon, Constantine smokes. Every. Chance. He. Gets. A further point of self-harm in his apathetic state. He’s been given a death sentence yet he speeds up the date anyway like any self-respecting Sam Spade. It’d be an actual cry for help if Reeves didn’t look like an absolute movie star while doing so.
The endless replayability of Constantine for me is watching those sly noir tropes play out in a biblical horror context. John and Angela’s separate cases turn out to be one and the same, with the coveted “Spear of Destiny” as a Maltese Falcon MacGuffin tying their fates together. Also in film noir, there’s the stern by-the-book captain clashing with the rule-breaking hotshot. In this case, it’s Djimon Honsou’s Papa Midnite versus the hotheaded Reeves.
Half-breeds Gabriel and Balthazar (Gavin Rossdale) function more like classic femme fatales than their namesakes, scheming and manipulating behind the scenes. They’re also dressed like 1920s gangsters as opposed to biblically accurate angels and demons. You’d be forgiven if you thought Al Capone was the son of the devil.
Beyond the noir overcoat, the movie has a pervading sense of fatalism alongside John’s cool existential despair like shot and chaser. Most of the supporting characters won’t make it to the end. Not that they had a say in the matter. The likes of Father Hennessey (Pruitt Taylor Vince) and Beeman (Max Baker) die horribly as if punished for their proximity to John. The chessboard tiles in his apartment position everybody as pawns in the war between heaven and hell—a predetermined game where the winners lose. Angela’s sister, though saved from the inferno, is still dead, while the loner John ends up more alone. Constantine remains malleable as ever as a horror noir, just as it is a dark fantasy sequel to the crucifixion story.
That’s not to say Constantine takes itself too seriously riffing on Catholicism or eras of film history. This is a comic book movie and a rare horror one at that. There are exorcisms, jumpscares, and ghouls straight out of Guillermo del Toro’s cabinet. Plus, we’re dragged to Hell and back. Though the demon effects are dated, director Francis Lawrence’s vision of Hell is still fiendishly inspired. Painted as a post-nuclear purgatory—or the inside of Constantine’s chest cavity— Lawrence sees the polluted nightmare of L.A. in Blade Runner through to its natural apocalyptic end. Coming from the world of music videos, Lawrence fares better in his debut feature than some of his peers.
In the age of superhero slop, Constantine is somehow more visually arresting now than it was then. When John pulls up in the opening exorcism, every frame is composed and sequenced like lushly drawn panels. The film’s stark character close-ups throughout feel true to the medium, as well as the cinema of Jonathan Demme.
Elsewhere, Lawrence and cinematographer Philippe Rousselot shoot in overhead angles like God casting judgment, or in low profiles bidding us to repent. Scenes in the daytime are always in a fading twilight. At nighttime, car and street lights litter the background like flickers of hope just out of Constantine’s reach. And when it rains in this biblical L.A., it pours. A stroll through a basement bar is so gothically and moodily drawn that you half expect to see Wesley Snipes gunning for John’s neck, too.
Virtually every character in the movie shares the frame intimately with Constantine, but it’s Lucifer (a delicious Peter Stormare) who wants him so badly. True to the writings of John Milton, the fallen angel’s sin is pride; just when he thinks he has him, Constantine has one more trick up his sleeve. Even two decades later, it’s refreshing to watch a superhero movie that doesn’t end in a CGI fight. Instead, the final act is a divine comedy where good deeds are more powerful than bullets.
It’s all the more astonishing to me that 20 years ago, superhero horror movies like Constantine were the earliest ones out of the comic book gate. Blade was here first, while del Toro’s Hellboy emerged amid X-Men and Spider-Man. (The fact that Hellboy and Constantine were easier sells in the early aughts than, say, a Captain America or Thor movie is gobsmacking.) Batman Begins, released the same year as Constantine, feels in lock-step with similar jumpscares and intense sequences, where Christopher Nolan had the Caped Crusader picking off bad guys like a slasher villain. In 2005, the genre seemed wide open for scarier gothic potential.
Alas, the Marvel Cinematic Universe dawned on us and this cult of “supernatural thrillers” went out the door with the likes of Legion and Priest. These days, all we’ve got on the comic book horror front are the most Sam Raimi parts of Doctor Strange 2. South Korea, so far, is our only port determined to keep this wicked genre alive with last year’s Exhuma and the upcoming Holy Night: Demon Hunters. Oh, what I’d give for THAT cinematic universe.
Constantine 2, bring on the flood.
Categorized:Editorials
