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| SEASON OF
THE WITCH |
Movie
review by Neil Sadler
Starring:
Nicolas Cage, Ron
Perlman, Stephen Campbell Moore, Claire
Foy, Ulrich Thomsen, Stephen Graham, Robbue Sheehan, Christopher Lee
Director: Dominic Sena
More
details
It's such a shame that I am not rating this film in terms of
silliness because SEASON OF THE WITCH would be a solid 6 out of 6 in
those terms.
The film tells the story of two crusading knights
who sicken of the hypocrisy of their mission and go AWOL. On the run
they come across a plague-ridden town and agree to take a witch who
is supposed to have caused the disease for her trial and exorcism at
nearby monastery.
Naturally it is not that simple but thankfully
not too complicated. What we have here is a Hammer Horror in all but
name but with a lot more money thrown at it. Sadly none of that
money seemed to go on the script, which barely raises a smile, let
alone many scares. What
laughs there are, are generally to be had at the expense of the
ludicrous accents and strange modernisms of the script. Thankfully
Hammer is making a comeback and hopefully it will produce better
films than this.
Nicholas Cage seems to revel in these turkeys and
gets to sport another in a series of silly haircuts. As an actor he
can be revolutionary but too often he chooses to appear in cheap
unimaginative fantasy pieces like this. Having watched him recently
in KICK ASS, there are times when his laid back style works well in
action films. Here he is totally miscast, convincing neither as a
crusading knight or troubled Christian.
Sadder still to see the likes of Christopher Lee,
Ron Perlman, Stephen Graham and Robert Sheehan (from the excellent
MISFITS) wasting their god-given talents on this demonically bad
dialogue. Ron Perlman is far better in this type of film than they
deserve and manages to be strangely believable despite making no
attempt at an appropriate accent. Robert Sheehan could be one to
watch and is one of the better things about this film, but he needs
to be choosier with his parts in future.
Not that this isn't fun in places. The effects
are all passably good and the pace is pretty brisk. However most of
the horror is pretty bloodless which makes for many unsatisfying
effects. Gore doesn't make a film scary but unfortunately you need a
bit more craft than is shown here to keep the atmosphere going and
the bumps and screams coming. A scene where the group are attacked
by wolves in a foggy forest starts well, but is so badly edited that
it becomes hard to tell or care what is happening.
And for a film that spends much of it's first
half hour showing battle after battle in various locations and
climates, you would have hoped that the battles would at the least
have some energy to them. But they are badly staged, filmed and
acted throughout.
Vaguely enjoyable if you can suspend disbelief
and your critical eye, sadly this is a bit of a waste of talent all
round and is likely to disappear in a puff of smoke.
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