Reviewed by Lamar Kukuk
1/8/11
I stand before you as an
aficionado of the Sci-Fi Channel (yeah, I know they call themselves SyFy
these days, but that's no reason why I have to do it) Original Movie, those
ultra-low budget flicks where one or two familiar TV or former movie stars
join forces to do battle against a giant monster or apocalyptic phenomenon.
Oh, they're not all great, many of them aren't even good, but my inner
10-year-old Creature Double Feature viewer is alive and well, and
I still enjoy this kind of thing. If you're like me in that regard,
you're the ideal audience for the first new release of 2011, the oft-delayed
Season of the Witch. Dominic Sena's latest was shot in SyFy's
Eastern European back yard, and tells a tale of former Crusaders on an
epic quest in the Middle Ages that is only missing the dragons and John
Rhys-Davies. Instead, it's got the supernatural (which is actually
a fairly rare element on SyFy, perhaps the reason they're not called SupFy),
kicking off a year when trailers suggest we're going to see an awful lot
of The Devil. Season of the Witch is well-cast and diverting,
and not nearly as threadbare as its repeatedly rescheduled release would
suggest. It's not going to stand as one of 2011's highlights (at
least, I hope not!), but fans of sincere and unpretentious genre flicks
will certainly see a lot worse before we flip the calendar to 2012.
It's the 1300's, and Knights
Behmen (Nicolas Cage) and Felson (Ron Perlman) gleefully fight their way
from one epic battle to another doing what they're told is God's work until
a massacre of women and children finally inspires them to desert.
Stopping for supplies in a plague-ridden city, they are arrested and brought
before Cardinal D'Ambroise (Christopher Lee). Himself dying of the
plague, he appeals to them to help Priest Debelzaq (Stephen Campbell Moore)
transport an accused witch (Clare Foy) to a monastery where the last copy
of a sacred book holds the key to destroying her powers and lifting the
spreading curse of the disease. Behmen believes none of it and refuses,
but when jailed next to the girl, he suspects that only he can protect
her and agrees to escort her if a fair trial is guaranteed upon their arrival.
The other members of their party: young squire Kay (Robert Sheehan),
Eckhart (Ulrich Thomsen) who lost his family to the plague, and thief Hagamar
(Stephen Graham), who has made this journey before and serves as their
guide. In the beginning, The Girl seems innocent enough, but she
has amazing strength and gradually grows more and more sinister as accidents
begin to claim her escorts one after another. Is she truly a witch,
or are other forces at work? Either way, the answer heralds one last
battle for Behmen and Felson, with the fate of the world in the balance.
The best thing about Season
of the Witch is its stars. I know I don't have a boatload of
company in this belief, but I like Cage's Con Air “dour man of action”
mode just as much as his more manic shadings, and he provides a solid moral
compass for an ethically confused tale that looks askance at the evil excesses
of the Middle Age Catholic Church while suggesting that its real mistake
was not working harder to figure out who really was a witch. Perlman
is a National Treasure to B Movie fans like me: the man has literally
no idea how to give a role less than his best, and he's every bit as charismatic
and delightful here as he was in the Hellboy movies, Uwe Boll's
In the Name of the King, or direct-to-video
flicks like Primal Force (which, in large part thanks to his terrific
performance, was really excellent, by the way). The two make an excellent
buddy movie team, and while there is little or no sense that they're in
the Middle Ages (even Perlman is guilty of attempting an accent only often
enough to make you realize he isn't), they're a lot of fun to watch together.
Foy, making her feature debut after a couple years of assorted British
TV roles, is really good as The Girl, running a very impressive gambit
of notes from diabolical to saintly. Moore (again, funny to see a
movie so disgusted with the Crusades where the Priest is pretty much always
right, but he makes it work), Thomsen and Sheehan are all solid in their
roles.
Domenic Sena's previously
only made one film (the Cage vehicle Gone in 60 Seconds) I was entirely
happy with, and Season of the Witch does have its issues.
It's not a terribly attractive film to look at, delighted as it is to linger
over assorted plague victims whenever it's not schlepping through the wilderness
in what appear to be sub-zero temperatures. And for every action
sequence that works (a perilous trip over a rickety bridge, the climactic
rumble with... well, that would be telling), there's another that's a dud
(a silly struggle with a wolfpack that's indistinguishable from stuffed
animals tossed at the actors swords, a parallel struggle at the climax
with about three times as many zombie monks as I would have preferred).
Perhaps it's to be expected given the repeated changes of studio and release
date, but there's also a maddening insistence on trotting out “Previously
on Season of the Witch...” clips every single time something that
happened earlier in the film is mentioned. I know the characters'
names are absurd and hard to remember, but I was at least KINDA following
the plot (unlike the characters, who seem to have entirely forgotten the
reason they came to the monastery for a moment once they arrive).
Quibbles aside, Season
of the Witch held my interest because the characters are well-played
and the central mystery of what's up with The Girl is genuinely intriguing
(and once it's resolved, I didn't feel cheated). If you've never
enjoyed a movie where a large group on a quest was picked off one by one
in the Hungarian forest by something that (probably) doesn't exist in the
real world, odds are this isn't the movie that will turn the tide.
But for those of us who've grooved to more than our share of those SyFy
creature features, Season of the Witch is a perfectly enjoyable
90 minutes at the movies. And it'll look even better once it finally
settles in at its real home, Saturday night at 9 on whatever they're calling
the Sci-Fi Channel by then. |
