I didn't hate this movie, nor did I hate Warlock (which was actually good) or End of Days (which I enjoyed, despite its many flaws). But it was, overall, almost entirely unremarkable. Not good, not great, not horrible. Hard to even really call it "so bad it's good".
The opening scene was certainly a strong point, with the heretical sect summoning the titular demon only to get shot dead by the obligatory black clad brooding 90s anti-hero, who also happens to be a priest. Everything after that, though, is pretty much downhill and very much standard 90s fare, complete with shoddy CGI (still not as bad as Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, so it least has that going for it). There's mention of another potential cell of the aforementioned sect, but nothing's ever made of that.
The Shadowbuilder itself left a lot to be desired. Andrew Jackson seems to be riding on the coattails of the now-late Julian Sands with maybe a dose of Andrew Divoff, but has none of the charm or charisma of either. He doesn't even look like the creature on the cover art, who, no, does not appear in the movie. His face is made of VERY obvious CGI darkness with a few vaguely discernible features. He also takes his sweet time claiming that sixth soul he apparently needs to become invincible, despite having AMPLE opportunity to claim almost any soul of his choice. Speaking of which, the rules about what souls he can and can't reap seems to change. On one hand, he tells an old man who killed his wife that his soul is useless to him, but also tells Father Vassey that his soul is ripe for claiming.
The sad thing of it is, is that the Shadowbuilder is the only characters I found interesting. Weirdly enough, I was rooting for him to succeed. So many movies (especially from this time period) that have a demonic bad guy trying to unmake the world, and they never win, either because they're too overconfident or stupid or because the cavalry always arrives at the last minute. Father Vassey may be a badass gun-toting man of the cloth, but after seeing one priest going through a crisis of faith, I've seen them all. Not even Tony Todd in his small role - which I like to call "Candymon" (get it? Because Tony Todd played Candyman and he has dreads in this movie, like your stereotypical Rastafarian who says "ey mon!" complete with a slight stereotypical Jamaican accent okay I'll get back to the review) - is much of a show stealer, even though that really seems like it's exactly what they were doing for. None of our side protagonists are very interesting, either, they're just kind of there and their only duty is to protect Chris (who's also pretty boring, despite being, apparently, a saint in the making).
There are a few unintentionally hilarious moments that stand out to me. For starters, while everyone in town is rioting and killing each other, there's a random stripper grinding against a stone cross and taking her top off. Then. After the Shadowbuilder tricks the aformentioned old man who killed his own wife (who is heavily implied to have killed the stripper) into chopping down the power lines, the power line falls on him and crushes him like a macabre Looney Toons scene. I actually burst out laughing at this scene. Finally, the Shadowbuilder tries to unmake the world by reciting the Book of Genesis backwards. When I say "backwards", I mean he reads the verses of the first chapter in reverse order, with every other sentence ending with "and". Contrast that with Warlock, where Julian Sands has to speak the true name of God backwards to undo creation, and you can't NOT laugh.
Maybe I'm a little too harsh on this movie. It's a direct to video effort, so of course it's not going to have the same impressive practical effects that Wishmaster did, or even much in the way of good talent (although they did get Michael Rooker and Tony Todd). But despite the small cult status Shadow Builder has gained over the couple decades since its release, I find it to be a mostly non-essential viewing. Also, while I have not read the story it takes its name from, the source material sounds absolutely nothing like this movie. Alas, it did have a cool holographic VHS cover, but it seems like those covers are oftentimes wasted on the movies they contain within.
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