When the feared Y2K phenomenon fizzled like a defective firecracker and the world apparently did not end with the coming of the new century, the Biblical literalists, awaiting the the End Times and the Rapture, suffered an entirely understandable disappointment. The History Channel's frequent examinations of the prophecies of Nostradamus and the Mayan calendar, however, offer a modicum of hope for dedicated millennialists and apocalyptarians. More important, Hollywood continues to whip up enthusiasm for global catastrophe with a steady stream of disaster flicks, including the recent "2010" and "The Road."

Now the new movie "Legion" returns the end of the world to something resembling its proper place in the scheme of history, with a plot based on a final confrontation between good and evil, the descent of angels, and dozens of portentous theological utterances. According to the film's repeated but quite confused interpretation, God Himself apparently decides that mankind has made a terrible mess of things - He finally noticed? - and instructs His angels to turn an unspecified number of humans into zombie-like creatures intent on annihilating the major characters.

Instead of some hill in the Middle East, the battle takes place in a crummy little diner, Paradise Falls (get it?) in the Mojave Desert, run by Bob (Dennis Quaid) and his son Dan (Lucas Black). Bob's waitress Charlie (Kate Walsh) is pregnant with the child who, a mysterious visitor announces, will be the last hope of mankind, and must be defended against hordes of attackers led by the archangel Gabriel. That visitor is himself another archangel, the well known Michael (Paul Bettany), who like Lucifer, son of the morning, rebels against God's commandment, only this time to save rather than to damn humanity.

While its major action depends upon a number of attacks that Bob, his employees, and several random customers withstand with the help of Michael and the carload of automatic weapons he gives them, an internal dynamic also engages the characters. Embittered by a failed marriage and his rotten business, Quaid vents his anger on his meek son, who loves Charlie, pregnant by an unknown man. A customer (Tyrese Gibson) who arrives at Paradise Falls because he's lost his way complains about his own unhappy divorce and the arrangement that prevents him from seeing his young child; he and the other people in the diner all seek some sort of reconciliation, or better, some sense of salvation.

When Michael drives up with his guns, he attempts several times to explain his mission and why he chooses to defend this unhappy and generally dysfunctional assortment of people who must, alas, stand in for mankind. Somewhat unconvincingly, he finds goodness in Dan and reveals to the weak, uncertain young man his genuine strength of character and the need for him to survive the terrors of this new Armageddon.

The several attacks by the throngs of transformed humans feature a number of contemporary horror elements, enough in fact to make "Legion" a kind of compendium film. Its familiar moments include an opening and closing sequence reminiscent of "The Terminator"; a sweet old lady who spews obscenities, then crawls upside down across the ceiling, an image right out of "The Exorcist"; an evil child from "Village of the Damned"; bizarre metamorphoses that echo "The Thing"; zombie attacks very like "Night of the Living Dead." It even underlines its quasi-religious themes with a grotesque crucifixion.

After innumerable desperate skirmishes, the loss of many lives, and a whole studio full of special effects, the movie finally settles matters with a strange hand-to-hand combat, complete with wings, between the two archangels, Gabriel and Michael, a sequence that doesn't appear in most Bibles. The verbal exchanges between the two spirits reveal an entirely new concept of angelic behavior, God's bad attitude toward mankind, and the future of the planet itself.

If nothing else,"Legion" endorses the spectrum of possibilities that hearten the whole end-of-the-world crowd. Along with a host of right-wing hate merchants, they may regard Hollywood as the contemporary version of Sodom and/or Gomorrah, while in actuality it endorses the horrific vision of the anticipated last battle, with some attempt at duplicating the special effects the Book of Revelations so helpfully provides, a script that, let's face it, demands Technicolor and digital imaging.