There’s missing the mark, and then there’s shooting yourself in the foot. “Legion” not only shot itself in the foot, but tempted the audience to do the same.

Now, don’t mistake this for my usual dissection of cinematic art. No, no, this is actually one of the worst films I have had the misfortune of seeing.

I realized this was going to be a B-grade horror/sci-fi flick from the previews — and I loves me some good ol’ B-grade horror — but this failed at maintaining the cheesiness needed to keep the entertainment going.

Paul Bettany plays the right hand of God, the angel Michael. He has been given the task of killing an unborn child, thereby causing the eradication of the human race, whom God has apparently become fed up with. The mother-to-be of this Christ-like child is a single, young waitress at a middle-of-nowhere desert gas station/diner.

The patrons include a dysfunctional family of three with car trouble, the diner-owner, a mechanic in love with the mother-to-be, a cook with a hook for a hand and a random thug-ish black guy carrying a gun. With a cast like that, cheeseball dialogue and bad one-liners should abound as death cuts a swath across the film, right? Well, no, not really.

As the action kicks in and the granny demon who would be right at home in an “Evil Dead” movie rolls up to eat a raw steak and yell profanities at the group, the movie appeared as if it would be a homage to everything fans love about bad horror. The problems begin shortly after.

Bettany shows up quickly after and is prepared with duffle-bags of military-grade firearms. Right when massive action seems inevitable, the characters start talking.

Now, this talking isn’t witty dialogue to accentuate action or coming action-styled antics. Oh no. This is the dialogue that bad college film students write thinking they need to explain plot and develop meaningful characters — but somehow the dialogue neither creates interesting characters, nor explains the gigantic holes or descriptions needed for the plot to make a lick of sense.

This is the dialogue that should be cut and chopped and then inserted into scenes where something is happening other than talking. This is the sort of dialogue the pompous and talentless Hollywood wannabes believe adds a degree of depth to their horrible cinematic visions. And the worst part of all this chit chat is they keep doing it.

They keep doing it between action scenes. They keep doing it between the mild and dull suspense scenes. They keep doing it between the dialogue that is actually needed. I actually started counting the tiles on the ceiling of the cinema during two parts of the movie.

But let us look at the action and leave the word vomit behind.

The previews showed a slew of angels diving in a God’s-decree-inspired, genocide-fueled formation across a heavenly sky. This scene is in the movie. For a whole six seconds and with no other cool flights of angels to be found.

The preview shows some of the fight scene between God’s two most favored angels: Michael, the right hand of God, and Gabriel, the left side. For anyone with a mind for fantasy and sci-fi who enjoys reading about biblical events outside of Sunday school, the idea of this fight scene is simply tantalizing. The idea is all there is, unfortunately, as the best bits are in the preview and the fight is pretty lame and short in the film.

The preview shows explosions and masses of angel-possessed humans — who for some reason appear demonic rather than angelic — and gunplay and close-ups portraying the fright of the characters in this wholly biblical event unfolding around them. The movie does not expand on any of these things. It instead utilizes the annoying afore-mentioned dialogue to drag the film along.

I prayed for “Legion” to jam in the projector, causing the print to catch fire and allow this nightmare to end.

Again, this prayer went unanswered.

As “Legion” nears its end, I had a glimmer of hope as I realized how just one cool twist could turn around at least the hollow and pointless diatribe and make the finale amount to something. Then, once again, the movie shoots itself in the foot and doesn’t even get a cheeseball award. It becomes lamer than I can understand and puts this film firmly into the category of Top 100 Worst Films of All Time. I can’t even spoil the ending, because there wasn’t one.

This wasn’t some interesting, open-ended, leave-you-with-questions ending. No, this was just nothing. Nothing was explained, nothing was solved. Like the rest of the film, the ending was just masturbation without any reward.

Watch the preview if you’re curious about the film “Legion,” but don’t bother watching it in the theater. Just stay at home and re-watch the final episode of “The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien.” Seriously, don’t even bother if it ends up on TV and you can watch it for free.

This whole movie has got to be God’s idea of a bad joke.

Gabriel Stoffa is senior in communication studies and political science from Ottumwa.