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“Season of the Witch” is the first film to be released this year starting off 2011 in a way that most audiences expected.
The film was a dud in every sense of the word. While many people may attribute this to Nicolas Cage because of his growing list of recently failed acting endeavors. The failure of “Season of the Witch” is not a result of the so called “Cage Curse.”
Instead this can be attributed to the fact that the film lacks any sense of coherence or substance at all. Throughout the film one question never really gets answered.
What kind of movie is this? Drama? Thriller? Horror? Romance? One thing for sure is that even though there are some very comedic parts of the film it isn’t a comedy.
The laughs only stem from the ridiculous plot and the fact that the film takes itself way to seriously.
The film takes place in the 14th century during the time of the crusades as the Catholic Church is in the process of killing everyone in its path that refuses to believe in God. Women are being hanged because of the scare that they possessed evil powers and were witches.
The plot centers around two knights by the names of Behmen (Cage) and Felson (Ron Perlman) who disbanded the crusades after killing many innocent souls. On their return to Behmen’s homeland, they find Central Europe in ruins from the Black Plague.
Finding they have nothing to retrun to, they leave for a mission given to them from Cardinal D’Ambroise (Chrisopher Lee, “The Lord of The Rings”) to take a young girl (Claire Foy) to an Abbey to destroy her evil witch powers, which are supposedly the cause of the plague.
They are joined by four others including an alter boy with the aspiration to become a knight named Kay (Robert Sheehan).
The filmatic style of the film is so muddled and flawed that combined with an incoherent plot there isn’t even any real entertainment value in the film.
Also, if this was not the first film released this year it would not be a falsehood to say that this is one of the worst films of the year.
The good thing about this film is that it shows that 2011 cinema can only get better.
