Movie review: The Season of the Witch

So, I always feel awkward whenever I have to wear my uniform from the Natatorium outside of work. I should clarify it's my Aquatic Specialist uniform which consists of this white polo and for whatever reason I always manage to get stains on it. Anyway, after work I went to go see a movie with my parents and yeah I was embarrassed for another reason. Okay, I know I haven't done my other two movie reviews yet - but let's just say this one kinda got to me. WARNING: Not much happiness lies ahead...

Let me just start off by saying I went into this movie pretty much not knowing anything about it - except for Melissa saying she went and saw it. Sometimes this is a good thing, I didn't read reviews for The King's Speech and aside from knowing it was about King George VI. Well, in this case not so much.

For one thing - the story was very convoluted. I blame that mostly on how bad the editing (and possibly the script) was since I was so confused! I mean it starts out with these three "witches" being hung off a bridge and the priest saying that their bodies need to be exorcised (the book thing comes in much, much later) and then goes into a 10 to 15 minute montage of Nicolas Cage and Ron Perlman going off and fighting in several Crusade battles. I was starting to wonder at this point if the movie was supposed to be called the Season of the Crusaders. Once we actually get to how the whole witch thing fits in - it has to do with the Plague. I will say for one thing, the makeup department had loads of fun making grotesque looking Plague victims. The villagers blame the whole Plague on one teenage girl, who they say confessed to being a witch. I will say the girl (Claire Foy) can really bring on the creep - but that could be because of her eyes and stringy hair throughout most of the movie. Well, she also had this smirk that also sealed this girl's fate as a deranged person. By the time they decide to take this girl to whatever special monastery she has to go for her fate to be decided - I was thinking "Wow, it's like Monty Python and the Holy Grail but not as clever or funny," and the quest is not for the Holy Grail...or the Holy Handgrenade. They take this supposed witch through treacherous land to get to their final destination. Things happen along the way that made me wonder whether the girl was innocent or not until half-way through. Well, there was a point with the cute curly-haired altar boy that I thought she might be...good? Curly-haired altar boy is not a boy by the way - probably in his twenties but he has such a baby face but cute though. By the time the movie is winding down - it is revealed that ::shocker:: she's not a witch but a demon! Seriously, I was wondering why there weren't dragons and unicorns in this movie, since there were werewolves - probably would have been more entertaining. And then the final showdown happens at the monastery and I thought it might not end well in a happy sense, and it kinda did. P.S. Apparently the demon caused the Black Plague and ended suddenly because of well these guys...

The only redeeming qualities I could see were the creepy acting by the girl, some humorous spots and the interesting camera angles. Cinematography was decent as were most of the effects. Still, I felt like I could've edited this movie better to actually give it a coherent storyline and I know I'm not the best video editor at all. It was like watching bad fan-fiction up on the screen. Like my mother said - there were parts where it had potential but it just fell way too short. After seeing this movie, my dad said "Well, that was mindless fluff" and I said "There was no fluff, it was just mindless." Apologies to those who enjoyed the movie - but I like to have my movies have a decent storyline that is edited well (I love mind trips like Inception - but that at least had some coherency). I mean I've seen The Last Legion and it was more entertaining and coherent than this one. I just don't have much faith in some of these movies coming out set in the Dark Ages - and it could be a fascinating story to tell.

Okay, eventually I will actually sit down and watch the original True Grit and compare as well as do my review on The King's Speech.

2 Stars out of 4 - you know why...