Director: Steve Miner
Cast: Julian Sands, Lori Singer, Richard E. Grant
Screenplay: David Twohy
103 mins. Rated R.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned that before how much I believe Steve Miner (Friday the 13th Part 2) is an underrated king of horror. From franchise filmmaking to original visions, he has crafted a lot of truly great horror films. Well, he also did some lesser works, and Warlock is one of them. It’s a perfectly serviceable film that gets a little lost in the weeds of its second act, but I wouldn’t put it with the upper echelon of Miner’s filmography.

It’s the last 17th century, and the townspeople of Boston have captured a Warlock (Julian Sands, The Girl with the Dragon’s Tattoo). After being sentenced to death, the Warlock, along with witch hunter Giles Redferne (Richard E. Grant, Saltburn), are transported forward in time, to the late 20th century, where their battle will continue once again. After the Warlock murders her friend and curses her, Kassandra (Lori Singer, Footloose) needs the help of Giles to remove her curse and put the Warlock down once and for all.

The reason why Warlock feels so disjointed and unfocused likely comes from differing viewpoints of the title character between the screenplay, by David Twohy, The Fugitive), and Miner’s vision of the film. It sounds like Twohy’s script made the Warlock out to be more of the hero of the film, or at the very least, less villainous and more misunderstood and persecuted, but rewrites leading to the start of production shifted the Warlock into the evil trickster he’d become in the finished product. So often throughout Miner’s film, it seems like the dynamic is less defined than it should be.

Performances, specifically Sands and Grant, elevate the screenplay more than really anything else in the movie. Sands is perfectly cast as the Warlock, and it’s amazing considering he almost passed on it, assuming it to be just another slasher film with traditional genre trappings, which he would not have been interested in. The true standout of the film, for my money, is Richard E. Grant as the witch hunter Giles. I’ve never understood why Grant isn’t a bigger deal outside of cinephiles, but his characters always feel more lived-in and real, even with the overly ambitious nature of this film.

On the flipside, Lori Singer comes across as boring, virtually giving no energy to the film. She has some slight chemistry with Grant, but you can tell she just doesn’t want to be here. The most interesting element of her character is the aging curse, but reportedly she didn’t want to partake, in the makeup and flat-out rejected it at times. She just doesn’t bring much to the character with performance, and without the interesting makeup, she is an uninteresting lead. Grant’s Referne should’ve been the main character, with a more present-day support character helping him to adjust to his new world.

There was enough good to warrant two more sequels to Warlock, but this first film on its own is just too much mixed bag, with a couple stronger character performances housed within a film that is missing its central identity. It’s too bad director Steve Miner wasn’t able to perfectly execute the tone that he’s normally quite good at. Whether it be Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers, the spooky Haunted House owned by Roger Cobb, Miner is frequently able to figure out the right tone for his films, but Warlock doesn’t know what it wants to be, leaving a film that is less interesting than its concept.

2.5/5
-Kyle A. Goethe

• For my review of Steve Miner’s Friday the 13th Part 2, click here.
• For my review of Steve Miner’s Friday the 13th Part III, click here.
• For my review of Steve Miner’s House, click here.
• For my review of Steve Miner’s Halloween H20: 20 Years Later, click here.
• For my review of Steve Miner’s Lake Placid, click here.