Constantine: City of Demons: The Movie Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.5

Constantine: City of Demons: The Movie Blu-ray Movie Review

Rougher, Darker and Still Smoking Like a London Chimney

Reviewed by Michael Reuben October 9, 2018

You can't keep a good sorcerer down—or, in the case of John Constantine, a morally compromised, damned soul of a sorcerer whose spells often have unintended and disastrous consequences. Despite the failure of their ill-conceived live-action TV show, Warner and DC keep finding ways to bring Constantine back to the screen, either in guest appearances in The CW's Arrowverse or in animated form. First, there was Justice League Dark, where the sarcastic magician was the brightest spot in the film. Now, there's a web series first released on CW Seed, then expanded into a full length feature on Blu-ray and UHD. The fire that illuminates all these appearances and keeps Constantine from burning out is British actor Matt Ryan, who so thoroughly inhabits the character, both in person and in the voice booth, that it may be impossible for anyone ever to succeed him.

The first five webisodes of Constantine: City of Demons were released on March 24, 2018, after premiering at WonderCon. There are a reported seven additional episodes slated for release on October 25, 2018, which will presumably complete the story. (The source material is the graphic novel All His Engines.) However, the version on disc is said to contain up to twenty minutes of footage that will not be seen in the series. Principal screenwriter J.M. DeMatteis says in the extras that he wrote City of Demons as a feature film, out of which the individual webisodes were then extracted.

City of Demons finds John Constantine (Ryan) in London, literally battling his inner demons as they materialize in the form of tiny vermin. He's recruited by his old friend, Chas Chandler (Damian O'Hare), who, in this version of the story, is British and a childhood buddy. In happier days, Chas and Constantine played together in a rock band, until Constantine's attempt to exorcise a demon from a young girl in Newcastle went horribly wrong. (The incident was routinely referenced in the live-action TV series, but here we get to see it in all its gruesome detail.) Despite misgivings, Chas begs his old friend to help his daughter, Trish, who has fallen into a coma the doctors can't explain. The girl's mother, Renee (Emily O'Brien), is distraught when the sorcerer about whom her husband has told her horrifying stories appears in Trish's hospital room, but Chas persuades her that mystical intervention is the only hope they have left.

After Constantine summons a friendly spirit named Asa (Laura Bailey) for diagnostic assistance, he discovers that Trish's soul has been captured by an unidentified demon who summons him to Los Angeles. The episodes of the web series released to date concluded as Constantine finally met his adversary in the form of Beroul (Jim Meskimen), an evil entity with plans to convert the City of Angels into his own little corner of hell. Beroul has taken Trish's soul hostage to extort Constantine's assistance in his diabolical scheme, and the sorcerer has little choice but to comply. All the while, he searches for a weak spot in Beroul that will allow him to turn the tables, with occasional assists from Angela (Rachel Kimsey), a spirit who leaps from body to body and claims to be protecting the city (but may have other intentions). It turns out that Trish is not the only mysterious coma victim; an entire hospital ward is filled with L.A. citizens whose souls now suffer in Beroul's ballroom, a domain of torture that out-Boschs Hieronymus Bosch. The key to releasing them all may lie in an ancient Aztec god, Mictlantecuhtli (Rick D. Wasserman), which Constantine raises from the depths of the netherworld for assistance, even though he knows that the powerful spirit may prove difficult to control (a lesson he learned all too grimly in Newcastle).

City of Demons more than earns its R rating, with gore and body parts, both human and demon, routinely flung across the screen. Constantine so frequently has to wipe himself of blood and entrails that it almost becomes a sick running joke. There's even an extended sex scene (of sorts). The memory of his youthful failure is never far from the magician's thoughts, and City of Demons eventually serves as a kind of reckoning with that early tragedy. But in the weary world of the sadder-but-wiser John Constantine, he may succeed in saving a few souls, but every mystical battle, even those he manages to win, exacts a steep toll, both for the sorcerer himself and for those who invoke his aid.

Constantine: City of Demons: The Movie Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

John Constantine's world is dark and dim, and the image on Warner's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray City of Demons reflects that style, with eruptions of bright colors usually reserved for mystical phenomena. (The demons always seem to have intensely glowing eyes, usually red.) The surroundings get a little brighter when the action shifts from London to Los Angeles, but anyone familiar with the noirish world evoked in such films in L.A. Confidential knows that there's always a dark underside to the city's sheen, and that's where much of City of Demons plays out. Detail and clarity are typical of Warner's DC Animated Universe productions, which reflect relatively simple line-drawn characters and backgrounds sketched with minimal detail. Unlike many of the DCAU direct-to-video films, however, banding did not appear to be an issue on City of Demons. This may simply be a happy accident, since the average bitrate falls squarely within the usual low range of Warner's DC animations at 15 Mbps (with over 5 GB of space left unused on the BD-25).

Constantine: City of Demons: The Movie Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

There's deep bass extension in City of Demons' 5.1 soundtrack (encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA 5.1). You hear and feel it both in the film's score by DC veteran Kevin Riepl and in the magical manifestations both good and evil (but mostly evil). The occasional rear-channel effect commands attention (e.g., a door opening and closing off-screen or an auto approaching from over your right shoulder that's heard before it moves forward and enters the frame), but Constantine's latest outing generally sticks to the usual DCAU approach to sound mixing, emphasizing the front soundstage with the rears mostly used to expand the listening space. The dialogue is clear when you can hear it, but the voices are sometimes buried in an overbearing mix. Maybe they're more audible when streamed through the CW Seed, but for Blu-ray the mix needed some tweaking to better prioritize the spoken word.

Constantine: City of Demons: The Movie Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• The Sorcerer's Occultist: Understanding John Constantine (1080p; 1.78:1; 13:38): A history of the character and his magical history, presented by City of Demons director Doug Murphy, producer Butch Lukic, executive producer David Goyer and Jason Louv, who is described as an "Occult Expert" and ups the intellectual quotient by citing the writings of Carl Jung.



• Constantine: City of Demons WonderCon Panel—2018 (1080p; 1.78:1; 20:50): A relatively small panel consisting of Matt Ryan ("Constantine"), screenwriter J.M. DeMatteis and Peter Girardi from Blue Ribbon Content, which is Warner's division devoted to digital series. This event followed immediately after the premiere of the first five episodes.



• Trailers: In addition to the two trailers listed below, which are available under Special Features, at startup the disc plays a trailer for The Death of Superman.
• Batman Ninja
• Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay

Constantine: City of Demons: The Movie Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Matt Ryan has already appeared as Constantine in several episodes of DC's Legends of Tomorrow, and he is set to become a series regular in the upcoming Season Four. It's always entertaining to watch the character interact with other heroes, who tend to bring out the sharper edges of a man who secretly doubts whether he belongs in such elevated company. But City of Demons offers a different look at Constantine, focusing more on the sorcerer's loneliness, guilt and despair. As the series' creators note in the extras, Constantine is, in John Lennon's term, a working class hero. He isn't a fancy professional like Dr. Strange—and City of Demons even manages to slip in a sly swipe at his opposite number in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It passes quickly, but the moment is worthy of Deadpool. Highly recommended for Constantine fans. Newcomers may want to ease their way into the conjurer's world with Justice League Dark.