Last year, I bruised my coccyx from spending a weekend at a Keanu Reeves-themed film festival in a tiny Glasgow theater. Included in that day's marathon was Constantine, the DC comic book adaptation starring Reeves as the chain-smoking detective John Constantine, who banishes demons in order to buy his way into heaven. At the time of its release, Constantine was critically maligned, but in the theater that day, there was a buzz radiating from the crowd of Keanu devotees as we watched our suited-up protagonist perform exorcisms with delightfully mellow charisma. As John momentarily rises to those pearly gates, he flashes the middle finger, which elicited whoops and hollers from the room. It was clear, then and there, that we would follow Reeves to heaven and hell.

In the 15 years since its release, Constantine has swelled to beloved cult classic status, but it certainly hasn’t always been so warmly embraced. In 2005, the film was released with solid if unremarkable box office returns, grossing $230 million; the critical reception on the other hand… not so much. Fans of the Hellblazer comics were unhappy with the adaptation's deviation from its source material; critics dismissed it as silly, particularly Roger Ebert, who thought that recapping the movie’s (admittedly wild) plot was enough to demonstrate its quality (or lack thereof). To be fair, on paper, Constantine reads like the movie equivalent of a My Chemical Romance concept album: Reeves’s hard-boiled private eye is like something straight out of a '40s noir. He glowers over his shoulder, face stuck with permanent scowl, and says things like “God’s a kid with an ant farm.” (Slap that on a t-shirt, Hot Topic, these ideas are free!)

Where Constantine succeeds, though, is in its deft execution of a tricky balancing act. In a film where Tilda Swinton plays an androgynous Gabriel, demonic omens appear as crabs, and cats are the gateway to the underworld, Constantine plays things completely straight. There are grandiose—and sometimes gross—set-pieces that are elevated by dramatic lighting (the heavens literally open up), CG effects that make zero attempts to achieve realism (those artificial demons do belong in hell), and a heaping dose of so-slow-time-stops slo-mo. By the time a devilish Peter Stromare, dressed all in white, descends from the sky as Lucifer, it almost feels... normal. There’s a “hear me out” attitude to the film: yes, I look stupid, Constantine says, but don’t I also look really cool?