If I ever have a child and he asks me "Papa, what were the 90's like," (I picture my child as a small British boy if you're wondering what that should sound like) then I would show him this movie. Then if he asked me what "horror" is then I would tell him "not fucking Spawn the movie!" Unfortunately Netflix thinks Spawn is a horror movie, so here we go. Fuckin' 90's out the ass!
If you're not familiar with Spawn, this is a film adaptation of a comic book. Originally created by Todd McFarlane, Spawn really pushed comics in both good and bad directions. I could go into this for more than I could talk about this movie but this is a fucking horror film blog! Not comic nerd talk! That's if I want to start another blog.
The plot of Spawn is simple: Al Simmons is murdered, then he gets offered a chance at revenge by the ruler of Hell (Malebolgia) if he promises to lead the army of Hell once Al is done. Thus, Al becomes Spawn. We have our angel and devil characters in Cogliostro and Clown. The one attempts to turn him to the side of good while the other works for Malebolgia and pushes for chaos.
Clown is what truly makes this movie. John Leguizamo fucking destroys everyone else in this film with this character. Who would have thought? You don't hear much about him, but this one film he nails the role perfectly. Also he actually bit into a piece of pizza covered in live maggots during the filming. Way to go the extra mile, John.
As for the rest of Spawn... well... this film combines the worst elements of the early comics and puts them in here while also glossing over the concept of "when you use up your power you die for real." Hell, the comics eventually dropped this plot device too. There used to be a counter at the end of every issue telling you how much power Spawn had left, then they deus ex'd it and that was that. So this movie is mostly guns and really really dated CGI. Fucking goofy flames, Malebolgia does not hold up in CGI form, an army of CGI spawns that move in 3-second loops and have multiples of themselves... shit is wiggity wiggity wack by today's standards. As a kid though I fucking loved all of it...
So while not a horror film, and still tinted a bit by nostalgia, this film ends up being a fun mess. The soundtrack is full of spooky 90's bands like Marilyn Manson and "techno." I use quotes because electronic music and the EDM scene has come a long fucking way from when we used to just refer to it as solely "techno."
You don't have to know a thing about Spawn to watch it, and that may work out to your advantage. Otherwise you end up nitpicking shit like me.
I give Spawn 2.5 bad CGI bee things out of 5:
