Season of the Witch Review

As an unashamed Nicolas Cage fan, it was heartening to witness the star’s run of form in 2010. Excellent turns in Kick-Ass and Bad Lieutenant (one of my films of the year) proved Cage to be the go-to-guy for unbridled dementia. The damp squib that was The Sorcerer’s Apprentice may not have achieved such heights, but as a 300 pound Texan once said, two out of three ain’t bad. Hopes were high then, that Cage would continue to impress with Season of the Witch.

The film stars Cage and Hellboy himself, Ron Pearlman, as medieval crusaders, who part ways with their comrades after becoming disillusioned by killing in the name of a supposedly benevolent god. They return to a country non-specific, which they find ravaged by plague. The local authorities deem the plague to be the doing of a young girl they have decided is a witch. Under duress, Cage, Pearlman and a selection of others are tasked with escorting the girl to a monastery for her witchcraft to be undone.

Season of the Witch is either enjoyable nonsense or a total dog’s dinner depending on how forgiving you are of cinematic stupidity, how many beers you’ve had and whether or not it’s ten o’ clock on Saturday night and nothing else is on. If you answered, ‘very’, ‘several’ and ‘yes’ to those three conditions, then you will no doubt enjoy Season for the romp it wishes to be. Otherwise, you may struggle to be impressed.

The film is stuffed to the gills with unoriginality – there’s a spot of the previous year’s Sean Bean starrer, Black Death, a dash of The Last Exorcism’s ambiguity (for a while), a vague air of Witchfinder General and Twilight’s naff CGI wolves to be noted in proceedings. There’s a certain ‘seen it all before’ feeling that mars the film throughout – up to and including a ‘cross the rickety rope bridge over the chasm of doom sequence’. Actions set-pieces are met with audience indifference, the special effects are no great shakes and the direction by Dominic Sena (Swordfish, Gone in 60 Seconds) is workman-like. It’s also a shame Cage doesn’t utilise his British accent.

The film does retain some charm in its occasional scares and its better than average cast, which includes the aforementioned Cage and Pearlman, Stephen Graham (This is England, The Damned United), Robert Sheehan (the gobby, immortal one from Misfits) and a cameo from an unrecognisably plague-scarred Christopher Lee. TV’s Claire Foy satisfies as the witch, but other than that, the cast don’t particularly impress, despite their accumulative on-screen charisma. Sheehan is wasted in a straight role – a crime given how natural a comedic performer he is. You keep expecting his earnest altar boy to crack a few unspeakably rude jokes, but to no avail.

Indeed, a healthy dose of humour could have improved the film no end. Whilst Season of the Witch may have pretensions of seriousness (a prevailing theme being the misappropriation of religion), what is required is a more full-blooded boy’s own adventure, with its tongue relocated to its cheek. There are merely two funny moments, one of which was unintentional (wherein Pearlman literally head-butts a minion of Satan – twice). An expansion of the supporting character’s pasts would also have been an improvement – a history between the accused witch and Stephen Campbell Moore’s priest Debelzaq is alluded to, but never elaborated on. Whilst these things would not have made Season of the Witch a classic, they would surely have made it a more memorable and enjoyable film than the stodgy filler that it is.