Season of the Witch
| release date | January 7 2011 |
| studio | Relativity Media |
| director | Dominic Sena |
| writer | Bragi F. Schut |
| starring | Nicolas Cage, Ron Perlman, Stephen Campbell Moore, Claire Foy, Robbie Sheehan, Stephen Graham |
| rating | PG13 |
| site | seasonofthewitchfilm.com |
| trailer 1 | Trailer #1 |
19 Comments
Um, it seems the people I saw this with all enjoyed the film. Its way better than Van Helsing in my opinion. Its a cool monster romp for sure. Its not great but enjoyable. The last 15 minutes are really cool. Give the movie a chance you might just find yourself enjoying it.
Oh season of the witch. I have to admit despite a strong first trailer and some interesting tv spots I pretty much got what I expected. A big turdfest with hints of unintentional laughter. Ultimately, it’s not the worst film I’ve ever seen and even though it had major problems with pacing, the performances, spfx, etc. Season of the witch still had a light entertainment value to it. The concept is kinda cool but in the hands of amateur film maker Dominic Sena it couldn’t help but to fall into into ridiculous cliches. That being said I have to give credit to the film makers for trying to bring something new to the table reguardless of how silly it came across.
this was a good movie not awsome,but good.has some scary moments and lots of action
TERRIBLE! All around. Terrible acting. Terrible effects. Terribly boring. Just terrible! And was the ending suppose to be shocking? uh I think not! U were right bd January does always suck. Thank God 2011 is looking good to us genre fans bc this belong in 2010.
I can never take anything Cage is in seriously.
Cage! Hang Your Head dude! This movie really Sucked!
Nicolas Cage??? Borrriiiiiinnnnnngggggg!!!!!
Brads review is pretty spot on here. The best part of this film is the imagination in your head before going in to actually see it. Its almost interesting, but in the end , just … soulless.
The last good movie he did was Con Air and that was 1997! Knowing was ok but the ending to the movie was so laugable.
When seeing a preview for this film forever ago, I was interested in seeing it. But then again, with Nic Cage and Ron Perlman leading the film, I had second thoughts about seeing it. I decided to give it a shot, and it was a big letdown. The first scene was particularly well done, but from that point on nothing really happens unless emotionless dialogue between the two main men, then the last 30 minutes of films involves lots of CGI effects, which actually was too badly done. With a better cast, and a better script, this one could have done way better.
Nicolas Cage should sign a lifetime contract with Disney. He can not scare anyone.
Review by Ryan Gelley
One of my favorite films of 2010 was Christopher Smith`s Black Death, the story of a monk tasked with determining if England’s “Black Plague” was due to witchcraft. It was a nuanced and thought-provoking film, eschewing the standard computer-generated witches and demons in favour of ambiguity, leaving it to the viewer to decide which characters, if any, were worthy of being called “hero”, or “villain”.
Season Of The Witch is no Black Death.
The story, quite simply, revolves around Nick Cage (Behman) and Ron Perlman (Felson) , who, under orders from a leprous and decrepit Cardinal D’Ambroise (Christopher Lee) are transporting a girl, believed to be a witch, across the English countryside. On their journey, Behman and Felson gather together the standardized rag-tag group of travellers, including the token overly devout priest and the young, idealistic rapscallion (played by the talented Robert Sheehan of British superhero drama Misfits). The girl is introduced, and the movie immediately screams “She Is A Witch!” at me. At this early juncture, I realized that subtlety was not to be found in Season Of The Witch. A better movie would have left in place some doubt about the true identity of the girl, but time and again we watch her perform impossible, magical feats of strength and pyrokinesis. Yup, she’s definitely a witch, and the priests are right to want her dead. It’s never a good thing when I’m yelling “listen to the priest!!!” at the screen. I thought there would be a mystery to unravel, an “is she a witch?” or a “has she been falsely accused?”moment…nope. Sure, some of the characters remain unconvinced, unobservant and ignorant, but for the viewer, there are no questions to answer, no intrigue, nothing to interpret. Dear Filmmakers, if the big revelation in your film is “supernatural forces are at work here!”, at least wait awhile (is 45 minutes asking too much?) to show it. Even M Night gets that.
Season Of the Witch features some truly hilarious dialogue, and suffers from its tendency to throw a “shit” or a “pissed off” into scenes alongside a “stand fast” or a “come off the horse”. It’s both jarring and outrageous. Rather than Old English, screenwriter Mr. Schut has apparently been using Quentin Tarantino and 1960s Marvel Thor comics to perfect his faux-elegant old-timey fancy-speak, and it comes across as downright laughable. This is a recipe for either `b-movie’ magic or `a-movie’ disaster. It all depends on your outlook. It’s ham-fisted dumb-ass filmmaking at its worst, but dammit, it’s kinda fun. Mocking, cringe-worthy fun, but fun nonetheless. Case in point; the “English” accents of Cage and Perlman, which drift in and out during the film. At first i thought they were doing British accents, then no accent at all, then just making one up, then slightly Irish, then back to British, etc. Tracking the `evolution of the accent’ throughout their performances proved quite entertaining.
Character development is missing from Season Of The Witch. There are supposed to be arcs for some of these characters, I’m sure, but which ones? Nobody learned anything in this film, nor did anyone watching (well, actually I learned that Nick Cage can’t perform a British accent, but that’s about it)
Halfway to their destination, some of the party still have doubts about the witch’s witchiness, so, as if to prove herself evil, she summons a large pack of wolves to attack the travellers. Great, a fight scene, right? Wrong. Sena does not know how to shoot an action sequence. The wolves, meant to represent a threat, simply impale themselves on our heroes’ outstretched swords, and it’s over, the wolves lose. There’s no tension in the scene, or in any scene. For a film that marketed itself as pseudo-horror, it is not scary in the least.
The CG in Season Of The Witch is awful.
There are flying demons that reminded me of Van Helsing, one of the worst movies ever made.
There are villagers that evoke Monty Python & The Holy Grail, but they’re not supposed to.
There are zombie priests that fall from the ceiling.
Everything about this film failed, but…
…I still had fun watching it. It has a spark of that rare fire that burns within the greatest of bad movies. The camerawork, CG, acting, and script all failed. Failed badly. Failed in a way I found extremely funny. I’ve not seen Whiteout, Sena`s previous film, but it’s now on my watch list. He’s clearly a director with a sadly limited concept of how to make a good movie. He’s also a director, like Uwe Boll, Ed Wood, Nevaldine/Taylor, etc, who makes films i enjoy. I’m not enjoying them for the reasons intended by the filmmakers, of course, but that doesn’t really matter. What matters is whether I was entertained, and I was.
It’s probably not a good use of your time to watch Season Of The Witch. It is a bad movie (pssssst, hey Bloodrayne and Plan 9 From Outer Space fans, it’s great, shhhhh).5/10
At the end of this movie, I was surprised to feel that I had actually been entertained, even though I spent the whole time watching it rolling my eyes and mumbling “Oh my God, what were they thinking?” I guess it was sort of a Mystery Science Theater 3000 moment.
The story of two deserter crusader knights being drafted, along with a few oddball companions, into transporting an accused witch to a super special monastery for processing/redaction/excorcism/whatever is mildly interesting, but most of the movie isn’t about the story, it’s about a roadtrip and the series of things that happen along the way. And these things make ZERO sense once you get to the end of the story and look back upon them.
Don’t get me started on the acting! I could watch Perlman read a phonebook for hours and be entertained. Unfortunately, I ended up fantasizing that he would kill Nicolas Cage and take the lead for the rest of the film. The stilted and dry delivery Cage gives his awful melodramatic lines is painful. Nobody else was given these lines. Perlman’s lines are common, modern English, Stephen Graham, oddly enough for an Englishman, comes across sounding like he just stepped out of a brownstone in Brooklyn. So why does Cage sound like a constipated wig-wearing escapee from a rennaisance faire? Basically, I just sat and prayed for more lines for Ulrich Thomsen and Perlman and winced whenever Cage opened his mouth.
But all is not lost. As I said in the beginning, when all was said and done I had the odd sense of having somehow been entertained (mildly) for a couple of hours. Take that for what it’s worth!
Why all the hate? I realize it has a simple plot, and nothing more exciting in those terms, but I loved the twist that revealed what the witch really was! Other than that, nicolas cage isn’t an impressive actor, and the only movie I’ve liked with him was National treasure
why all the hate this movie rocked or maybe your all just to dumb to see whats going on here, all you little kiddies dropped bombs on this movie but Lord of the rings come out and you all dress up like frodo this movie gets an 8
I almost don’t want to call Dominic Sena’s “Season of the Witch” a bad film. It is, in fact, NOT a remake of the George Romero film of the same name; but as an original work, it still lacks the grit and enthusiasm that could have made it work. It treats serious subjects with near apathy, the actors never seem into it, and frankly, the whole thing just stinks. It’s not the worst movie I will see this year, but it is still slow, ponderous, and stupid. Now, with that ponderous bit, I have a really big problem; the film is slowly paced, as if it is indeed pondering something, but none of us decent human beings can really see what the film is trying to, well, ponder. This becomes a problem, as “Season of the Witch” takes itself seriously to the point where the whole tone backfires, and the film becomes a silly one.
This could have made for an interesting movie. The film stars Nicolas Cage and Ron Perlman as two ex-crusaders, who have just fought many battles, which are rather conveniently named and subtitled when we see them being ever-so-quickly fought. After pretty much leaving the other crusaders, the two lone warriors get a little bit of good ol’ “guy-buddy time”, and they also happen upon a plague-ridden area, in which there is a young woman being convicted of starting the disease. She is accused of being a witch. Our two main hero characters agree to help deliver her to a monastery, where the demonic forces inside of her can be cleansed, and the girl can be saved.
Let’s talk about the plague for a second. I saw “Black Death” about a week back, and I thought it was a good movie that treated its subject matter with respect. It was even a little insightful, on a thematic level, in ways that “Season of the Witch” is not. The problem with this flick, when it comes to the plague, is that it treats one of the most historically important cataclysms as some sort of road-side attraction. The witch is what matters, although shouldn’t the surrounding make for some good historical commentary? Given that the plague is everywhere in this particular journey, I would think so.
However, to my surprise, this does not begin as bad of a movie as it ends. It starts out decently, if not in an underwritten matter. I still can’t say I ever, not for even a moment, liked this movie; but it had something going for it, and it may have been its premise. Then, I was caught off guard; this was all an illusion. I realized this when the filmmakers unleashed CGI wolves and humanoid bat demons onto the characters, and onto the audience’s senses. These are unpleasant moments, because all the computer-generated-imagery in this film looks horrible. Absolutely horrible. It’s stupid, and I’ve seen better from even worse movies.
I like Nic Cage, and I like Ron Perlman, but only when Cage is in “Bat Lieutenant Mode” and Perlman is in “Hellboy Mode”. What mode are they in here? Snooze mode? Because their performances didn’t even stand out. Granted, each has done worse; and each has landed themselves worse movies overall, but shit, I didn’t expect them to be so boring. The same can be said to their supporting stars, who are rather indecent in their delivery.
If this is a horror-thriller, then it is considerably short on atmosphere. If it is historical, as a film, then it is short on intelligence or commentary. It lacks a good reason to exist, if only because the filmmaker behind it is completely incapable of making it work. I’ve seen better “so-bad-it’s-good” movies. Come on people; make good movies out of good material. We don’t need more movies like “Season of the Witch”, but then again maybe we do. After all; how else would that seldom seen success feel so darned special?
Will reward one with horror and adventure in a cool lil package!
i liked it, pretty good
not as bad as I thought it would be. Nothing earthshaking or original, but still pretty entertaining.
some of it is fun, but overall nothing to special