SeasonoftheWitch

Season of the Witch (2011)

The movie opens with a couple of knights, Behmen and Felson, fighting in the crusades. Thru a series of battle scenes we see that they are in the holy land for years fighting for the church. Eventually after seeing women and children being slaughtered in the name of the Pope they leave. But unfortunately they swore a vow to the church and are considered deserters. They get arrested in a town on their way home and are given the choice of being punished or escorting a suspected witch to an isolated Abbey. They choose to escort the witch and along the way some very creepy things begin to happen that slowly convinces them that there might be something to the church’s accusations.

Okay so I sat down to watch this one with very little expectations. I mean it is a Nicolas Cage movie and lets be honest he has made some pretty bad ones lately. And this is also one of those movies that I don’t even remember being in the theaters. So there are two big negatives right there. But I have to say that I was surprised how much I enjoyed it. The story isn’t at all what I thought it was going to be and was filled with a couple of cool twists that I’ll not ruin. Let me just say that it kept me guessing about what was happening and then when I thought I had it figured out they tossed something else in.

I wanted to talk about the cast. I’ve already mentioned that Nicolas Cage is in this movie and plays the lead character, a knight named Behmen. He is pretty good in a “hey look it is Nicholas Cage playing a night” kind of way. Cage isn’t one of those actors that can disappear into a role and always brings that goofy delivery to whatever character he is playing. But it works here and I had fun watching him. Also in the movie is one of my personal favorites, Ron Perlman, playing his sidekick (for lack of a better word) Felson. This is a typical wise cracking role that Perlman does so well. I also wanted to mention a brief (almost cameo) appearance by the great Christopher Lee, who is buried under a ton of makeup but still manages to be noticed.

Lets talk about the behind the scenes stuff. Season of the Witch isn’t a low budget movie, but it isn’t a huge one either. The smaller budget does show up in the big battle scenes that establish the Cage and Perlman characters at the beginning. There is obviously a lot of CGI being used to try and make the battles seem more epic then they really were. This isn’t a deal breaker for me because it really is just background for what we get later. And speaking of CGI the creatures including some zombie monks (pretty cool stuff) and killer wolves are also all CGI. This is kind of a bummer, but it is pretty good CGI that didn’t take me out of the movie. There is one creature that isn’t brought to life too well with these effects and it is an important one. I’m keeping it vague here because I don’t want to ruin it.

Overall I’d have to say that Season of the Witch is worth checking out. Every once in a while a movie slips out onto DVD/Blu-Ray without getting as much attention as it should have. Hell this thing is better then most of the big summer movies that I’ve seen so far. I recommend that everyone give it at least a chance.

3 out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer