Constantine (2014)

A near-perfect companion piece to the similarly creepy-quirky Grimm, this lavish adaptation of the DC Comics Hellblazer series is the freakiest and most stylized fantasy pilot since Sleepy Hollow, and Ryan's instant grasp of this cocky but battered hero will make it easy to forget that Keanu Reeves ever went there.

Ryan, a Welsh actor little known on these shores, is the best thing about the pilot. Second best are some genuinely creepy special effects and scares, but the plot itself is a muddle.

Falling somewhere in the middle of the dark/light scale between Gotham and Flash, tonight's promising premiere boasts a few good jolts, a welcome bit of visual flair, and an appealing star turn from Welsh actor Matt Ryan, who conveys just the right mix of tortured soul, biting wit and hunky hero.

The series looks and feels appropriately ghoulish with a couple of good gotcha moments and excellently rendered scary creatures prowling the shadows, in between clunky expository passages.

There's the structure for a sturdy but unremarkable supernatural procedural (and companion piece to "Grimm"), but in the pilot, at least, producers David Goyer and Daniel Cerone aren't aiming for much more.

Not only does it promise scares, but it looks good, moves quickly, and uses effects well and wisely. In a market that's rapidly growing, Constantine does a commendable job distinguishing itself.

If you’re not already a fan of the story, Constantine has some kinks to iron out before the unenlightened will willingly follow this master of the dark arts.

Constantine doubles down on both shape-shifting and puzzlements. Its whiz-bang-boom special effects also might serve as ample enticements for viewers who don’t much care whether anything makes any real sense.

Constantine seems like a good fit tonally for Friday night companion series “Grimm,” but Constantine will need to more clearly establish its world--and the rules of its world--and better define its characters if it hopes to become a fanboy favorite.

The pilot is very spotty.

As the title character, Matt Ryan is great as the world-weary, faintly sleazy, self-proclaimed exorcist, demonologist and master of the dark arts.... Less successful is the story.

There's a fun dynamic between John and Chas that is yet to be explored, while we haven't even met the third member of our trio yet.

He’s another reluctant antihero battling supernatural terrors that, with the help of some whiz-bang special effects, are all style and no substance.

A sometimes sharp but painfully predictable Constantine premieres Friday night.

The new show is a perfectly adequate, even above-average example of the genre, but at this late date, it’s hard to stand out from the crowd.

The best thing about the new NBC series, Constantine, which is based on The DC Comics "Hellblazer" series, is that its hero has a roguish sense of humor

There’s good stuff in the pilot--the special effects, for one--and not-so-good stuff, leaving the question up in the air about whether writers David Goyer and Daniel Cerone, who developed the series, can make the fixes necessary to do justice to Hellblazer.

The wildly uneven Constantine premiere is a decidedly mixed bag of magic tricks. It's moody and mysterious. It's also muddled and meandering.

Messy pilot that doesn't offer enough backstory, or reason to care all that much about Constantine.

A well-stubbled Matt Ryan works hard to charm with womp-womp wit.... A wan female sidekick comes and goes. But the cockroaches impress. Good luck giving a damn about the rest.

The series--adapted by Daniel Cerone with an assist from genre specialist David S. Goyer--nearly chokes on its mythological mumbo-jumbo, and frankly, yelling at demons in foreign tongues seemed a whole lot scarier back when “The Exorcist” first turned heads.

The problem is that, as executed, the show seems stuck a creative netherworld all its own, somewhere between straight-faced action epic and snarky, quip-filled, Buffy the Vampire Slayer–style near-parody — and because it doesn't have the artistic chops of a Buffy, or a Sleepy Hollow, for that matter, it all comes across as calculating and insincere,

The turns of the convoluted plot and the thick-as-a-brick backstories of the largely dull, undetailed characters are all that seem to matter to the show's writers.