"Keep your souls, let me find a chicken"

Season of the Witch 20/10/2011

Director: Dominic Sena          Writer: Bragi F. Schut

2011

So we begin with ominous candlelit book reading that serves to create an air of mystery and a sense of time. Nothing spectacular but fine. Then we get an introduction to what witches mean in this film, and as usual they mean innocent young ladies being persecuted (beauty equals innocence we naturally assume) while we also get an unrepentant deformed old hag...so she must be guilty. Again, fine.

            Things are shaken up a little with the death of a priest by some kind of zombie with creature, but this isn’t actually mentioned again as far as I can tell, so I don’t really see the point. I suppose we need some action and scariness early on. We certainly get action with our two main stars, Mister Cage and Mister Perlman, both of whom can be great in action roles and to be honest they are the main reason I watched this film.

            I quite liked the battle scenes in the crusades where we see the strength of their friendship and the ability to chop, impale and spinning flip kick any robed faceless heather in their path, complete with 300(2006) style slow motion. Now we know they are the good guys because they fight for the church against the godless foreigners right? Not sure I like that premise but I didn’t watch the film for its ideas on foreign policy so I can get over it. BUT OH NO! Nick Cage disembowels some innocent lady-heathen and now they don’t want to slaughter people anymore. Apparently it pays to be female if you want to worship a different God from the stabby guys.

            At this point I was fairly optimistic (don’t ask me why) and thought we might have a 14^th century outlaw buddy cop thing going on, even if Perlman seems to be playing second fiddle, despite being funnier, bigger, cooler and beardier. And after a nice jump-scare in a creepy house we learn of a plague, and its apparent cause, a witch who happens to be all cute and nice looking. We already know that attractive = innocent right? Right?? Well we have to keep watching to find out.

            So the ambiguity about whether Claire Foy is an occult agent of Satan and general spreader of pestilence, or whether she is just cranky, is the most appealing part of the film along with the knight style bromance. BUT OH NO! The writer messed up and got rid of any real ambiguity far too early and now we don’t care about the rickety bridge (the film loses it from here on in) or CGI wolves or if Cage is all eaten up inside because of the innocent woman he skewered. The film becomes a series of stock characters, cliché dialogue and scenes stitched together to serve the plot. And the Perlman mentions something about a hometown or being 3 days away from retirement...bad move Hellboy! Probably not worth the time.