Cinema Verdict Review: Season of the Witch

Season of the Witch

OPENING: 01/07/2011

STUDIO: Atlas Entertainment

RUN TIME: 95 min

ACCOMPLICES:

Trailer, Official Site

The Charge
Not all souls can be saved.

Opening Statement
A game Nicholas Cage headlines a solid cast in Dominic Sena’s Season of the Witch. The movie looks great and is appropriately authentic, but lacks a narrative focus, particularly in a flat, unappealing and downright embarassing third act. Oh Nic Cage! What have you done!

Facts of the Case
A pair of 14th Century knights called Behmen (Cage) and Felson (Ron Perlman) flee the Crusades after a series of conflicts leaves them questioning their religion. En route home, they run into a plague-stricken castle where they discover a hopeless people who believe their “curse” was cast upon them by an evil witch (Claire Foy).

In need of spiritual acceptance, Behmen and Felson agree to accompany the young woman to a nearby kingdom, where her ultimate judgement awaits. Along with a hapless priest (Stephen Campbell Moore) and a young, courageous knight-in-training (Robert Sheehan), Behmen and Felson discover the road before them is more perilous than expected–and will test their abilities, and, ultimately, their religious beliefs.

The Evidence
Nicholas Cage relishes making bad movies. You can tell by the way he pours his all into a film like Season of the Witch as if hell-bent on exploiting the film’s overtly silly nature, but in a knowing way that allows audiences to see that he’s in on the joke–even if he really isn’t.

As directed by Dominic Sena (who also directed Cage in Gone in 60 Seconds), Witch offers much in the way of technical prowess, but little overall satisfaction. You get the sense, about midway through, that a chance to make a minor gem arose–a gritty, violent, even scary schlock of horror–but studio execs didn’t fully buy into the concept and tacked on a worthless finale as a marketing tactic. Notice how the climatic action figures more prominently in the trailers than it does in the film? That’s no coincidence.

A shame, because up until that horrendous finale, much of Sena’s film feels surprisingly alive, even exciting. I found myself actually caring about Cage and Perlman, who both make fitting representations of bygone knights with troubled, blood-soaked pasts, no longer sure of which side to serve. Cage, in particular, etches a hardened scowl on his face, and looks splendidly heroic adorned in a cape and wielding a sword. By now the Academy Award winning actor knows all of the tricks. He knows when to cheat a little, when to hold back and when to play it loose. This isn’t a performance likely to garner anything more than a brow raise, but you have to hand it to the man–he can play just about anything/anyone when he puts his mind to it.

A few set pieces peaked my interest, not the least being a rickety old bridge, which the heroes must cross (horses, carriage and all) to arrive at their destination. The sequence drips with tension and is splendidly shot and edited. Another bit involving a pack of ravenous wolves (are there any other kind?) that morph into ghastly demons before they attack, affords some fun B-movie thrills. I liked the foreboding forests, the eerie fog and that nasty-as-puke “plague” makeup covering Christopher Lee–you can tell it’s him by the voice. Foy plays the is-she-or-isn’t-she-a-witch role and delivers every line like a slippery serpent waiting to strike.

Season of the Witch is a road flick and so much time is spent watching men on horseback banter back and forth, bridging the more audience-savy action bits. Call it a pint-sized Kingdom of Heaven meets Ghost Rider, with the results being exactly as you would imagine–even down to the Shakespearean dialect, that strains under the more contemporary exclamations of “Holy shit!” or my favorite: “I say we kill the bitch!”

Yet, despite the obvious flaws, Witch moves along quite briskly. An hour into the film I scribbled on my notepad, “What’s wrong with movie critics?” in regards to the abysmal five-percent positive rating Witch currently holds on Rotten Tomatoes. Was this merely another attack on Cage, an actor who has the audacity (sarcasm) to churn out films like The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans and Knowing all in the same year? Suffice to say, I silently cursed all critics for their wrongdoings until I arrived at the third act.

Horrendous special effects (seen briefly in the opening pre-title sequence) mixed with bad editing and convoluted plot twists destroy (no, eviscerate!) all of the good will that came before. Consequently, you walk out of Witch thinking about all that went wrong instead of everything Sena and his crew got right–hence the five percent approval rating.

I threw out Kingdom of Heaven and Ghost Riderearlier. Here’s another film that came to mind when watching Sena’s flick: John McTiernan’s The 13th Warrior, a film that shares similar sensibilities with Witch (i.e. warriors tasked with casting out the supernatural), told in a comparable grungy tone, that is ultimately undone by a lackluster ending. If you found no love for McTiernan’s film, stay the hell away from Sena’s.

As for Cage, he’s done far worse (The Wicker Man), and here shows versatility as a veteran actor. Yet, there’s something telling in that the scripts he chooses prove to be lackluster, almost mawkish. Many actors, including fellow Oscar winner Michael Caine, admit to phoning in some of their performances as a means of securing quick cash, but at least Caine made good movies every once in a while. Cage’s career follows that of John Travolta’s, a man who lived to cash paychecks, and ultimately wound up a Hollywood laughing stock.

Closing Statement
Despite a noteworthy performance from Cage (and Perlman), and an engaging first hour, Season of the Witch all but falls apart in its muddled, poorly executed finale.

The Verdict
6/10

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