Editorials
20 Years Later: The New Year’s Eve Horror of ‘End of Days’
The holidays- New Year’s Eve, especially- are a time dedicated to excess. It’s only fitting that End of Days, an action-horror hybrid starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and set in the days leading up to New Year’s, honors the spirit of this time of year with a glut of over the top entertainment and outlandish narrative turns. Released in theaters twenty years ago on November 24, 1999, End of Days pounced on the looming fears the turn of the millennium would bring. Instead of Y2K and crashing computers, though, it was the resurgence of Satan in New York City and his quest to impregnate his chosen bride. In the sort of convoluted way that only a grand epic blockbuster-style film can, of course.
After a cold open featuring the birth of the Prince of Darkness’s bride twenty years before the millennial New Year and an explanation of her destiny, the film cuts to present day where Lucifer explodes from the depths of hell, and the sewers, to find a host body for his conquest. That host belongs to an unwitting banker (Gabriel Byrne). He doesn’t know it yet, but his most significant obstacle to finding and claiming his bride, Christine York (Robin Tunney), is former police detective Jericho Cane (Schwarzenegger).
Anyone well versed in Satanic horror will spot Cane’s character arch from a mile away; the film introduces him as a suicidal alcoholic that lost his faith after the death of his wife and daughter. The Exorcist and its many copycats taught us those reluctant heroes who’ve lost their way eventually regain their faith and save the day. While the bare bones of the plot might be predictable, screenwriter Andrew W. Marlow (Hollow Man) and director Peter Hyams (The Relic, Timecop), who also handled the cinematography, keep the journey exciting.
Mere moments after contemplating suicide with his gun, his partner Bobby Chicago (Kevin Pollack) shows up with coffee. Jericho takes the piping hot cup of coffee and blends it up with leftover beer, Pepto-Bismol, two cartons of leftover Chinese food, a thin cut of meat, and a stale piece of pizza from the kitchen floor. He drinks his revolting breakfast smoothie straight from the blender. It’s this precise brand of outlandishness that makes End of Days transcend its familiar premise.
When Jericho finally crosses paths with Christine, who’s oblivious to the Satanic prophecy and her role in it despite nightmarish visions, he becomes her protector. From there, he deals with an endless barrage of devil worshipers, evil guardians with super-strength, betrayals, hallucinogenic temptations, and a slew of Vatican knights who are on a separate mission to stop Satan’s consummation. If anyone can take a beating over and over again, it’s Schwarzenegger.
1999 marked an anxious time, when computers were expected to fail time zone by time zone, causing an apocalyptic domino effect on society in its wake. It’s fitting that End of Days should mirror that feeling with the Vatican and a slew of New Yorkers standing in the way of a biblical apocalypse set to commence when the ball drops in Times Square. There’s a bleak undercurrent, but it’s balanced by the explosive action and the zaniness of the horror elements. Jericho does kick that old nanny’s butt along with anyone else that gets in his way, and you can count on him to stop Satan, too. He’s just going to do it with over the top flair.
In its own weird and charming way, End of Days perfectly captures the New Year’s Eve holiday; that anxious period in which we try to shake off the year’s stresses and look ahead to the shiny possibilities of a new year heralded in by celebrations and libations. This film is a tonal blend of those warring emotions; the bleak and downtrodden against excess and hope. A campiness that’s matched by poignancy.
End of Days is hardly without flaws; save for a fun CGI climax, poor Satan doesn’t have a whole lot to do. But it’s always fascinating and entertaining. The perfect type of movie to pair with pizza, beverages, and friends, which sounds like an ideal way to spend New Year’s Eve to me.
Some movies are just so beloved that you can experience them through cultural osmosis without ever sitting down to actually watch them. From loving parodies to meticulous recreations of iconic scenes, memorable filmmaking lives on even after the curtains close on the silver screen. And when it comes to horror, few films can compete with the massive impact that Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining had on popular culture as a whole.
Whether or not you think the flick is a good adaptation of Stephen King’s seminal novel, 1980’s The Shining slowly but surely grew into one of the most influential genre movies ever made, inspiring everything from surprisingly heartfelt sequels to classic episodes of The Simpsons. However, not all The Shining references are created equal, and today I’d like to shine a light on six unexpected homages to Kubrick’s iconic film.
In this list, we’ll be focusing on references and Easter eggs that either came out of the blue or came from creators that you wouldn’t expect to be fans of this classic ghost story. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own favorite references to the Torrance family and the Overlook Hotel if you think we missed a particularly memorable one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
5. A Nightmare on FaceTime – South Park (2012)
Regardless of the brand’s iffy reputation among former employees, the death of Blockbuster Video was a serious blow to fans of physical media. Of course, some folks were more affected by this than others, and South Park’s Randy Marsh definitely took things a little too far in the twelfth episode of the show’s sixteenth season.
Titled A Nightmare on FaceTime, the main plot of this 2012 story is a surprisingly faithful recreation of The Shining where Randy purchases an empty Blockbuster store and begins to go mad once he realizes that his investment may not have been a very good idea due to the rise of streaming and the now-defunct RedBox storefronts.
4. The Overlook Hotel Level – Ready Player One (2018)
I was never really a fan of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, so I viewed Stephen Spielberg’s divisive adaptation of the novel as an improvement over the source material despite having its own narrative issues. In fact, I actually prefer how Spielberg changed the story by removing several references to his own work and replacing a lengthy Blade Runner detour with an over-the-top homage to The Shining.
A CGI-heavy recreation of the film’s most iconic moments that feels like a big-budget ghost train ride set within the Overlook Hotel, this intense sequence is more of a recreation of the freaky aesthetics of The Shining rather than its mind-bending narrative. However, it’s still fun to see Spielberg make a heartfelt tribute to a filmmaker that was once his close personal friend.
3. IKEA Singapore Halloween Ad (2014)
It makes sense that commercials don’t typically borrow from the horror genre, as it might be a bad idea to scare away potential customers, but some references are just too much fun to pass up.
That’s probably why the publicists behind this Ikea ad from Singapore were allowed to turn their commercial into a genuinely unsettling recreation of Danny’s tricycle scene from The Shining. After all, nobody cares if your store is haunted so long as it offers late-night shopping hours and a large selection of merchandise that you can become lost in forever and ever…
2. The End of ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’ – Community (2014)
Community is no stranger to recreating iconic movie moments within the show, and the series had previously tackled horror tropes in episodes like the fan-favorite Epidemiology. However, the most laugh-out-loud moment on this particular list comes from a brief gag towards the end of the season five episode ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’.
The majority of this episode has nothing to do with scary movies, but there’s a brief subplot involving supporting character Chang and a possible encounter with ghosts that leads him to question his own existence. This subplot culminates in the episode’s hilarious ending where the camera zooms in on a black-and-white photograph of Chang in period clothing at some kind of celebration, just like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining.
However, the picture’s subtitle eventually reveals that it’s merely a conveniently placed keepsake from the ‘Old Timey Photo Club’.
1. The Overlook Hedge Maze Sequence – Zootopia 2 (2025)
Disney movies are pretty far removed from both the gruesome horror of Stephen King and the heady filmmaking of Stanley Kubrick, so I don’t think anyone was expecting the climax of last year’s Zootopia sequel to take place in an animated version of the snowy hedge maze from The Shining.
In this unexpectedly intense sequence, friend-turned-villain Pawbert Lynxley (an unhinged lynx cat played by Andy Samberg) chases our protagonists through a creepy labyrinth in a loving recreation of Jack Nicholson’s icy demise outside the Overlook Hotel. The actual ending here might be a little more child-friendly than what’s being referenced, but it’s amazing that the filmmakers were able to push the horror elements as far as they did – especially since the scene doesn’t really have anything to do with the rest of the movie.
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