From the DVD Shelf: Season of the Witch

Nicolas Cage: the first crusader with an American accent. Oh and Hell Boy is there too.

Not many films deal effectively with the medieval period, most normally distorting it out of context horribly by relying upon worn out historical stereotypes to get them along – witches, the Black Death, the Crusades, Mud filled towns, Rain – all that jazz. Well Season of the Witch is pretty much precisely one of those films. Boy are there historical inaccuracies (don’t even get me started! – as someone who likes the crusades...I think I nearly cried) and these probably can be forgiven, I mean it never promises to be the next Braveheart, but the lack of exciting action, rather poor pacing and more often than not silly and dull dialogue, means it doesn’t even really deliver on the whole ‘fun’ part of dumb historical (ish) action movies of this type either.

Season of the Witch follows Behmen of Bleiruck (Nicolas Cage) on a 14^th century crusade (...) as part of the German Crusading Teutonic knights accompanied by his trusty sidekick Felson played by Ron Perlman. After realising the horrors of the crusaders in God’s name he and his friend desert and return back to Germany which is stricken with the plague. Here they are tasked with transporting a Witch to a remote monastery for trial in a hope to end the horrible pestilence. A journey ensues, trials and tribulations are fought (though not seemingly enough); unsatisfactory ending, credits roll.

Probably one of the main sticking points is certainly the lack of action, despite the fact that action was probably the only thing that was ever going to save it. Even the initial section of the film, when Behman and Felson are on crusade, the action is rather dull. This section is carried out through a montage of a number of supposed conflicts across a fictional crusading campaign, none of which are on screen long enough to be exciting or interesting. This sequence isn’t helped by the poor dialogue, some pretty bad special effects and laughable props and costumes. Once they return to ‘Germany’ (a Germany consisting of a population who speaks entirely in American of English accents that is) things don’t get any better. In escorting the witch there are long periods where little happens and their greatest foe is a rickety bridge and a pack of wolves. Really, there isn’t any interesting action till the finally, and even that is tiresome. They’d already given up on the whole ‘reality’ thing anyway; why not throw in something more exciting? Dragons? Zombies? Charlie Sheen?

Obviously all this lack of action leads to some long dialogue heavy scenes, none of which are particularly thrilling. Cage and Perlman’s characters seem content with throwing around one liners and for me, the dialogue did nothing to evoke the time period in which the film was set, only succeeding in reminding me, yo this is a film. I mean would crusaders really tell each other that they should 'get the hell out of here?' Probably not. The actors themselves do little to improve upon this. Cage seems rather lazy in his delivery and makes not one iota of effort to put on anything that just isn’t his own accent – something that Perlman is equally guilty of. They might as well have phoned it in. The other notable roles mainly fall into obscurity and truthfully there are so many English actors in Season of the Witch that I didn’t even realise that it wasn’t set in England till writing this review, which doesn’t really help a setting that is already rather confused.

There were some areas where light did indeed shine and I felt the dynamic between the Witch, played by Clair Foy, Cage’s character and the Priest, Debelzeq , played by Stephen Campbell Moore, was actually initially interesting leaving the audience guessing as to whether she truly was a witch or whether this truth had been instead beaten out of her at the hands of the priest, something he strongly denies. Sadly though, this small bit of intrigue is short lived, replaced by further drudgery.

In the end, Season of the Witch is hampered by a large number of issues and it will please neither those searching for something historically interesting or those just looking for a fun romp. It’s not even enjoyable on an ironic ‘hey look at Nicolas Cage in this awful movie’ kind of way, it’s just dull. Don’t go see it; there are better things out there. If you want to go to see a silly depiction of the medieval world...just go watch The Holy Grail - I'm sure you'll be much better satisfied. Ni!