Full Moon offers their take on “Innocent Blood” with the tale of a vigilante demon and her hapless doctor boyfriend who proceeds to fall in love with her despite her demonic underpinnings. Angela Featherstone is insanely sexy as Veronica, a young demon who hangs out in hell sorting out sinning souls with her father, a dutiful monster who wants her to step in line and follow his orders. Veronica is restless though, and seeks to visit the Earth realm to see what it looks like. After fighting with her father once more, she escapes with her loyal German Shepherd to the outer world. There, she discovers the world isn’t that different from hell, save for the fact that the sinners and pure evil are able to hide among the civilized, rather than be punished.
After being hit by a car, Veronica is found by a noble doctor named Max, who falls in love with her and brings her home. While researching the human world, she realizes there is a lot of evil, and being able to detect sin, she goes out at night murdering and viciously mutilating criminals and thieves. “Dark Angel” is something of a dip in to the superhero pool with Veronica acting as an anti-hero, prone to eliminating her enemies in the most gruesome ways imaginable. One scene even finds her tearing the spine out of an attacker. Director Linda Hassani’s entry in to the Full Moon library is fine enough, but often very silly and never really as cogent as it could be.
Writer Matthew Bright never seems to know if Veronica, herself, is a villain or a hero throughout the narrative, and when he centers the film on Veronica learning about mundane life, there isn’t much sexual chemistry between Featherstone and Daniel Markel. There’s also no real antagonist for Veronica, save for a few cops that begin investigating when she starts mutilating criminals. She’s hell bent on stopping the mayor of the city who she’s convinced is evil, but he only gets three short scenes and never transforms in to an actual threat or villain. That said, the mood and atmosphere compensate for the inherent camp that follows the adventures of the demon Veronica, and Angela Featherstone is gorgeous enough to keep you entertained until the baffling finale.
Now available digitally restored, for the first time on Blu-ray from Full Moon Features.