Season of the Blech

Okay, so "The Season of the Witch" wasn't that bad. But it wasn't that great either. I pretty much only went to spend time with my roommates. The movie itself was fairly predictable-- a knight grows tired of killing innocents in the crusades and ends up being re-conscripted to take an accused witch to be tried by a monastery; a monastery that contains the only remaining text used to destroy witches and demons and the like. He picks up some companions, the girl seems innocent, and the priest seems like the more likely candidate for evil and witch-hood. People die along the way. There is a big confrontation between good and evil in the end. la la la.


I am not a fan of horror movies and when half the previews were for horror movies, I began to get a little suspicious. For the most part, though, it kept the action/adventure/witchcraft formula. Most of the creepy pop-ups were easily anticipated with the Pirate-of-the-Caribbean knock off music. There was a fairly nasty plague that left people looking more like zombies and a fair share of gore during sword fights and confrontations with the witch. A hint of werewolves perked me up half way through the dragging tale but the story line was never pursued than and I went back to guessing who would die next.
The story line was predictable and the writing sub-par (along with some of the acting...). Though a Nicolas Cage is one of my favorite odd-movie actors, this was Not the movie for him. His sidekick, played by Ron Perlman, actually made the show work much better than the script did. Still, the campy humor and anachronistic dialog made the script slow and annoying as the setting tried to remain true to the gritty, pseudo-medieval time period. Cage tried to pull of his dry wit but it didn't really fit the character and the jokes fell flat. Clair Foy did well playing the accused witch-- sufficiently creepy and innocent; I was guessing at her place until the last battle.  Robert Sheehan was a cute, flat knight-in-training who pulled out some mad skills at the end.


It was a passable 98 minutes but not particularly uplifting or inspiring.  My imagination and logic are slightly piqued without being actively engaged but the movie did initiate an interesting debate among me and my roommates. Still, barring any nightmares that creep into my over-active imagination, this is not a movie I will return to.