PTG Movie Review: Season of the Witch

Well, that certainly wasn’t worth the wait.

For those who might have been paying attention, previews for Nicolas Cage’s foray into sword-and-supernatural period films, Season of the Witch, began appearing in theaters around this time LAST YEAR, as its distributor at the time, Lionsgate, had scheduled it for release in March, 2010. But five weeks before its scheduled date, Lionsgate pulled it from their slate.

Now I see why, or at least I think I do.

It’s not a good thing when you walk out of a Nic Cage movie and say to yourself, “Thank God for Ron Perlman!” Not that I have anything against the veteran actor at all–his turns as Hellboy have made him just about sacrosanct in geek circles, so even if he was bad in everything else, which he isn’t, no one would care. it’s just that in this film, Perlman is the sidekick, and thus its sad that he’s the most entertaining thing on screen at any given moment during SotW’s thankfully short 98 minutes.

Cage plays Behmen, a 14th Century Knight who deserts the Holy Crusade he and his buddy Felson (Perlman) are on once he realizes, “Hey, look, we’ve been killing women and children in the name of the Church.” When he and Felson return to England, they find the countryside ravaged by what we as the audience are left to think is “The Black Plague“, only the clergy in one particular village have a different idea about what’s going on: a witch (Claire Foy) summoned the disease from Hell, and thus only with her death will the plague end. Though at first he refuses to serve the Church again by delivering the witch to a monastery where the monks know the proper ritual to deal with witches, Behmen eventually agrees under the condition that the girl receive a fair trial to determine her guilt or innocence. The rest of the film details the journey to the monastery, the discoveries made along the way, and the inevitable death of lots of characters.

Apparently, this project has been in development since 2000. To me, it felt like a half-assed D&D campaign put together by a DM who might have been a medieval history buff in about ten minutes, rather than ten years. The story is predictable, the characters are stock archetypes from table-top role-playing games (Knight, Priest, Rogue, Fighter), and the central dramatic question that the trailers for the film seem to ask–is she a witch or isn’t she?–is dispensed with pretty early on in the film, leaving nothing but the body count to resolve itself.

The action itself is serviceable, if not remarkable. The sword fights look and feel like the work of someone who’s watched a lot of the work of better period action film directors like Wolfgang Petersen and Ridley Scott. Similarly, the special effects on screen look like they were crafted by people who’ve seen every Guillermo del Toro movie ever made. Thus, you could say it all comes together and looks like an imitation of better movies, but just an imitation.

With regard to Cage as Behmen, this is quite possibly the ONE case of miscasting that might finally lift the casting of Richard Gere as Launcelot in First Knight out and away from “worst miscasting of a medieval knight EVER” status. (Personally, I didn’t mind Gere in that role, but I’m all alone there, pretty much). Cage’s attempt at taciturn and remorseful just comes off as drab and miserable; it’s a very good thing that Perlman is in just about every scene with Cage, and his Felson is much more irreverent, fun character. The script doesn’t attempt to constrain either actor with period-style language, resulting in anachronisms that Perlman can pull off and Cage simply can’t. For those folks out there (like me) who actually enjoy Cage’s awful movies as guilty pleasures or movies to just laugh out loud at, this one should be lots of fun on home video. Just make sure someone else puts it in their Netflix queue so that your friends on there don’t give you grief.

To top it all off, the film’s color palette is almost entirely shades of gray, adding to the plodding feeling you get even with its short length. By the end you’ll feel like you’ve been released from a dungeon yourself.

Has Cage made worse movies? Yes he has. Bangkok Dangerous comes to mind, in particular. Has he made worse career choices? Sure he has–just look at his current financial situation. But this one really feels like it should have gone straight to video and never seen the light of a cinema. If anything, Cage should have just opened up his home to director Dominic Sena and the cast, bought lots of Cheetos and Mountain Dew, handed the screenwriter a Dungeon Master’s Screen and some dice, and said, “Okay, let’s roll for initiative!”

Grade: D+ (but for folks who enjoy Cage’s horrible movies, a solid B!)