ANI-MOVIES, *Constantine: City Of Demons

The third DC Comics animated web series on CW Seed was based on the Hellblazer story arc involving Constantine, the main character portrayed by Constantine actor Matt Ryan returning to voice him for the second time, once before in the Justice League Dark movie. Whether this feature is part of the DC post-Flashpoint line-up, or taking place in the Arroverse like the previous two CW seed animated shows isn't fully revealed, as there's little to no mention of other characters outside of the standard Hellblazer comics.

Exorcist Constantine gets a call from his childhood friend Chas to save his daughter Trish, who is in an unexplainable coma. John calls in the Nightmare Nurse, a benevolent female demon, and realizes Trish is possessed by a demon lord Nergal, who wants Constantine to come Los Angeles. Once there, John and Chas are confronted by Nergal, first disguising himself as a slothful lower demon, and goats Constantine into getting rid of five demons muscling in on his turf, otherwise Nergal will send Trish's soul to Hell. John also meets the living spirit of L.A. who can temporarily possess its citizens one at a time, and wants him to find a way to snuff out Nergal. Constantine gets an Aztec god to take out the quintet of demon hoods, and then threatens Nergal with releasing hundreds of demons from Hell unless he frees Trish, but ultimately they had to sacrifice the memory of Chas' existence from Trish and her mother in order to overflow Nergal's body with love, which destroys the demon like a cancer. Chas suddenly has no memory of having a daughter, or even knowing Constantine, leaving our hero to wander back home alone with one of his leftover inner demons for company.

City Of Dreams works alot better from The Ray and Vixen animated projects as it flows as a full story as opposed to the previous episodic entries. The only major flaw storywise is the ruse Nergal tries to use on Constantine by taking on the persona of a Godfather-type demon, and revealing this to him a little earlier in the plot than was needed, and would've worked better near the finale. Matt Ryan does a fantastic job as Constantine, and Laura Bailey does an amazing Nightmare Nurse by doing her Lust voice from Fullmetal Alchemist. J. M. DeMatteis was a great producer in this picture, and a big improvement over his previous two Batman animated films. Anyone who felt stiffed over Keanu Reeves' performance will be pleasantly surprised by this Constantine movie.