WARLOCK: THE END OF INNOCENCE (1999) * ½

Julian Sands couldn’t be lured back for the third entry in the Warlock franchise, but we have Bruce Payne in his place.  He memorably played the slimy villain in Passenger 57, which made me hopeful that this wouldn’t completely suck.  We also have the lovely Ashley Laurence from the Hellraiser series onboard as the fetching Final Girl.  However, neither of them can bring much life into this unnecessary and forgettable sequel.

Laurence stars as an adopted college student who gets a mysterious invitation to visit her birth parents’ ancestral home.  (Her boyfriend says, “Only you would get a call at 7:00 AM from a historian!”)  For much of the first act, Laurence walks around the empty house in a flimsy negligee with a slightly confused look on her face.  A little later, her friends show up to keep her company.  The evil Warlock (Payne) also appears posing as an architect and tries to turn Laurence’s friends against her in order to fulfill an ancient curse. 

Warlock:  The End of Innocence is a slow moving and frustrating sequel.  Not much happens during the ninety-four-minute running time and the creepy house location wears out its welcome fast.  Director Eric Freiser does little to make the house interesting or scary, which is odd since he does a good job early on during the dorm room scenes.  I liked the long camera take that goes down the hall room to room exploiting the kinky goings-on in the dorm.  Since this scene also serves as our introduction to the characters, it’s quite economical.  Too bad this sort of precision is sorely lacking elsewhere in the film.

It doesn’t help that the Warlock spends most of his time talking to our characters to gain their trust before messing with their minds.  Payne’s performance is missing the panache Julian Sands brought to the role, but in his defense, Sands was given much better scripts to work with.  Laurence is good though and her performance is the best thing about the movie. 

The film might’ve skated by with Two Stars if the death scenes weren’t so uninspired (there’s death by fire and freezing).  Although there’s a decent throat slashing scene, the bulk of the kills are disappointing.  There is a potentially cool torture dungeon scene that plays like a mix of Hellraiser and Cannibal Ferox, but it’s way too brief to have much of an impact.  The lame finale helped assure that The End of Innocence was the end of the road for the franchise.