The Minion
Year: 1998
Director: Jean-Marc Piche
Written by: Matt Roe, Ripley Highsmith
Threat: Demon
Weapon of Choice: Spiked Glove
IMDb page: 
The MinionYear: 1998 Director: Jean-Marc Piche Written by: Matt Roe, Ripley Highsmith Threat: Demon Weapon of Choice: Spiked Glove IMDb page: |
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Rish's Reviews
The title (which I love) is partly to blame for me renting this. When I was a boy, my
best friend got a parakeet. I can't really remember why he did it, but it infuriated his
little brother, who insisted their mother buy him a parakeet as well. I joked that, unwilling
to drive forty miles into the city, his mother obtained the second parakeet from Satan,
which explained why the bird's name was Minion. It was pretty funny, I thought, until
people started dying.
Then it became REALLY funny.
So, the story goes that the devil has a shot of getting out of Hell every thousand years.
The Knights Templars are charged with keeping him locked away, but when the key
to his release is discovered under modern-day New York, an evil being called the Minion,
aka The Wendigo, aka the Antichrist, aka "El Diablo," makes it his mission to bring about
Armageddon, hopping from human host to human host in an attempt to retrieve the key.
It's up to our man Ivan Drago, er, Dolph Lundgren, armed with his ceremonial spiked
glove, to see to it that the Minion does not succeed.
Actually, there's a neat idea behind this, and the script seems to be pretty good. But
nearly every scene is horribly flawed. It didn't reach its potential, and the potential was
there. I guess the main problem is that the film is cheap. Except for Lundgren (who
hasn't been a big star in America since . . . heck, maybe ever), there's nary a recognisable
face in the bunch. And many of those actors used are mediocre at best. Set in New
York (it even appeared to be shot in New York) and other locales, including Jerusalem,
it felt non-American to me. My guess is that it was CANADIAN!!!!!!
Like I said, I rented this because I liked the title. If I had seen it under its alternate
title, Fallen Knight, I would've surely kept on walking, renting something like
Cellar Dweller or Slaughterhouse,
where Buddy has an axe to grind . . . a big axe, instead.
More of an action film than Horror, despite its premise, it only merited eight Skulls. It
reminded me a little of The Hidden, a little
of End of Days, and a little of The
Terminator, and had enough Horror elements to count. This was another of
those films made at the end of the 20th Century, trying to capitalise on the fear that came
with the millenium's end. It wasn't scary, though, and the villian didn't seem very
menacing. While the box claimed the film was rated R, it could easily have been PG
rated. It might even have been made for conservative religious audiences in mind, with
its off-screen violence, absence of profanity . . . not even kissing. Weird.
Even so, The Minion was not a bad movie, just too ambitious for its miniscule
budget. It's not a good movie either, but falls somewhere in between.
Posted: March 28, 2005
Total Skulls: 8
| Sequel | ||
| Sequel setup | ||
| Rips off earlier film | ||
| Horror film showing on TV/in theater in movie | ||
| Future celebrity appears | ||
| Former celebrity appears |  |
Dolph Lundgren |
| Bad title | ||
| Bad premise | ||
| Bad acting | |
|
| Bad dialogue | ||
| Bad execution | |
|
| MTV Editing | ||
| OTS | ||
| Girl unnecessarily gets naked | ||
| Wanton sex | ||
| Death associated with sex | ||
| Unfulfilled promise of nudity | ||
| Characters forget about threat | ||
| Secluded location | ||
| Power is cut | ||
| Phone lines are cut | ||
| Someone investigates a strange noise | ||
| Someone runs up stairs instead of going out front door | ||
| Camera is the killer | ||
| Victims cower in front of a window/door | ||
| Victim locks self in with killer | ||
| Victim running from killer inexplicably falls | ||
| Toilet stall scene | ||
| Shower/bath scene | ||
| Car stalls or won't start | ||
| Cat jumps out | ||
| Fake scare | ||
| Laughable scare | ||
| Stupid discovery of corpse | |
|
| Dream sequence | |
|
| Hallucination/Vision | |
|
| No one believes only witness | ||
| Crazy, drunk, old man knows the truth | ||
| Warning goes unheeded | ||
| Music detracts from scene | ||
| Death in first five minutes | ||
| x years before/later | ||
| Flashback sequence | ||
| Dark and stormy night | ||
| Killer doesn't stay dead | ||
| Killer wears a mask | ||
| Killer is in closet | ||
| Killer is in car with victim | ||
| Villain is more sympathetic than heroes | ||
| Unscary villain/monster | |
|
| Beheading | ||
| Blood fountain | ||
| Blood spatters - camera, wall, etc. | ||
| Poor death effect | ||
| Excessive gore | ||
| No one dies at all | ||
| Virgin survives | |
|
| Geek/Nerd survives | ||
| Little kid lamely survives | ||
| Dog/Pet miraculously survives | ||
| Unresolved subplots | ||
| "It was all a dream" ending | ||
| Unbelievably happy ending | ||
| Unbelievably crappy ending | ||
| What the hell? |