Film Review: Season of the Witch

When less than two minutes into a film, your inner film critic starts composing sentences about how bad said picture is, it’s never a good sign.

The trailer for Season of the Witch suggested that it was basically going to be Nicolas Cage, being Nicolas Cage, but in medieval times. Score. Throw in the colossal visage of Ron Perlman and you are surely talking about the most kick-ass team of dudes in all of Christendom? Which is strangely appropriate, as we join the pair romping their way through the Crusades in the 1300s killing Jews and various other heathens left, right and centre. But they leave the army after suddenly growing a conscience about killing civilians (yes, because I bet they didn’t kill a single one in the previous seven years) and are eventually captured and imprisoned for desertion. Here begins our story: it’s just a shame that the prior build-up was so cringe-worthy that I’m already left cold and slumped, frowning over my popcorn.

Now don’t get me wrong. I didn’t go along expecting to see a full-scale epic quest movie, and I did expect it to be somewhat tongue-in-cheek. But there’s comedy and then there’s just terrible. The inconsistency of the comedic elements didn’t help. The entire beginning section could have been viewed as pure farce if there had been any suggestion that it would be heading in that direction, but the middle section falls flat on its face in comedy terms, masquerading instead as a tense supernatural thriller. I don’t think it helped that the motley crew of misfits undertaking the journey which constituted the bulk of the plot displayed very little in the way of depth and inspired very little in the way of empathy. The so-called witch herself prowled cat-like in her cage flashing beseeching wide eyes presumably in an attempt to prompt an 'is she or isn't she' reaction in the audience. Sadly their isn't enough of a hook and the plot bumps along the bottom of the film experience like a square wheel.

The script itself was unbelievable dross; flat, uninspired and at times wildly anachronous, it lurched painfully from faux middle English to modern day schtick. I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear Cage call Perlman ‘brah’ at any time. I’ll leave specific examples out of it so as not to hamper the small amount of amusement you’ll actually get if you choose to watch the film, but suffice to say, it was way off the mark and completely off-putting.

Plus points to be drawn from this bizarre piece of film-making go to the cinematographer, who brilliantly presented the backdrop of the Austro-Hungarian wilderness in all its bleak and jaw-dropping splendour. Lots of prizes go to the make-up and costume department for their work on the pus-filled boils and the spectacular helmets, respectively. I also rather liked Nic Cage’s long curly hair. Um, what else? Well, the ending is truly hilarious. The movie finally remembers what it should have been about in the first place and having seen Ron Perlman headbutt Satan himself, I left the cinema relieved that I had been able to claw a modicum of enjoyment from the thing at all.

Rating – 1/10 if they were serious. 4/10 if they weren’t.

Film Review – ‘Knowing’ – directed by Alex Proyas and starring Nicolas Cage

Fifty years ago, a young girl writes a series of seemingly random numerals in a letter that is placed in a time capsule… Fifty years on, that letter lands in the hands of a young boy, whose scientist father tries to make sense of it all. Chaos and creepiness ensue.

Nicolas Cage plays, well, himself. I forget the character’s name but really, it’s hardly relevant. I am a fan of Cage but the increasing levels of tripe he chooses to associate himself with these days is starting to put me off, particularly in consideration of the fact that he really only has one dimension: the slightly disaffected, solitary maverick, punctuated with a varying degree of swashbuckle and the odd dash of eccentricity. Sadly in Knowing, the swashbuckling eccentric gives way to the dourest version of Cage’s perma-character since The Family Man. Even the action sequences, although few and far between, seem tame and lacklustre in comparison to his usual exuberance (for example in the enormously fun albeit preposterous National Treasure series).

He does a solid enough job though, and the supporting cast, although not stand-out, are fairly inoffensive, particularly the children who surprisingly fail to annoy me. The problem isn’t the acting performances, but the plot. It starts out with a decent concept, and the first half of the movie is actually quite good, creating an eerie atmosphere and working the viewer into a state of cold anticipation using the usual horror techniques expertly. However, from a typical horror/chiller opening and mid-section (think The Sixth Sense or Signs) the screenwriter appears to have had some kind of schizophrenic episode, as the plot takes a turn for the ridiculous, and veers wildly from genre to genre, threatening for a while to become a fully-fledged disaster movie, before culminating in a truly cringe-worthy sci-fi style ending that screamed Scientology from every crappy CGI-filled orifice. As is often the case with these types of movies, the ‘big reveal’ is a let-down of epic proportions in a plethora of ways, not least that the so-called aliens are basically just Bros with black cloaks. And slightly more colour in their cheeks.

As is my wont, I found myself second-guessing the ending fairly early on and I’m quite confident that I came up with a much better one in my head in about two minutes. In actual fact, I feel that we were set up for a completely different (and undoubtedly better) movie to the one we actually ended up with, quite apart from the laughably twee ending. After the exposition, the first major scene with Cage lecturing to his class about randomness versus determinism to me seems to be hinting at an interesting and thought-provoking concept, that a decent scriptwriter would have rode with, instead of becoming distracted by the seemingly persistent notion that in Hollywood in the present day you cannot make a dime of profit without throwing aliens at a story. We could have ended up with a more cerebral version of the Final Destination theory (death has a plan) but instead, well, you know the rest (I scratched it into the desk with my nails because the alien-stroke-angels told me to).

I could make a comprehensive list of ‘stuff that didn’t make sense’ but I am holding myself back as I often tell others to ‘suspend reality’ and just enjoy a film experience, however far-fetched, and I don’t want to be accused of being hypocritical. But I will just say one thing – the black pebbles – just WHY?

Verdict - never has a well constructed concept dissolved so rapidly into rank mediocrity - 5.5/10