It would seem common sense that if you were to make a film that unashamedly and comprehensively ripped off another film’s ideas, concept and storyline you would not start your film in exactly the same way as the one you stole from. Well the makers of Demon Hunter don’t seem to think so anyway. They whole film is basically a Conscienceless Constantine clone involving a morally ambiguous guy who has a special gift for disposing of pesky demons who have managed to crawl into our dimension. Demon Hunter opens with our world-weary hero violently exorcising a demon from a young girl whose Spanish mother descends into clichéd foreign histrionics downstairs. This is exactly the same scene that opens Constantine and is indicative of the level of originality to be found in this film.

Sean Patrick Flannery plays Jake Greyman, the titular demon hunter, a half-human, half-demon hybrid who for reasons never really explained works for the Catholic Church. Greyman falls into the surly leather jacket wearer category of heroes and when not busting some TV quality martial arts moves is stomping around being a bit cross about, well nothing in particular really. Greyman’s latest mission involves Asmodeus the lust demon (played by the ever-entertaining Billy Drago) who has turned up on the Earthly plane and is up to all the sorts of things you would expect a vacationing lust demon to get up to, hanging around in crypts and screwing hot women mostly. Of course it would be no fun if Greyman had to do this alone would it? No of course not, so he (being an inhumanly powerful supernatural being) is naturally teamed up with umm… an inexperienced nun. Don’t worry though, this is an implausibly sexy Angelina Jolie look-alike nun so that’s all right.

In fairness, Demon Hunter isn’t a bad film. Its concept, though entirely unoriginal, is good, the performances are fine and the story trots along at a jolly pace reaching its rather inconclusive conclusion well before it has outstayed its welcome. There is plenty of action, lots of demony high jinks, loads of hot women taking their clothes off for the boys and Sean Patrick Flannery’s rippling six-pack for the girls. Add to this an innocuous little story with a couple of unexpected twists and some completely competent direction and what have you got? Well, as it turns out what this all amounts to is nothing really, the cinematic equivalent of a McDonalds meal – quick, bland and utterly forgettable.

It is simply the deficit of anything original that really sounds the death knell for this film. Everything in it has been done somewhere else before but bigger, better, louder and with way more style. There is no emotional involvement in the characters or story and the whole thing is over before you’ve even really registered that it has begun. It all comes across as a failed feature length pilot for a television show rather than as a movie in its own right. Watch Constantine instead.

6/10

Review By Matt Compton