Tom has always felt like an outsider. His random visions, his longing desire to hunt when all life requires of him is to feed the pigs, and of course, being the seventh son of the seventh son. Luckily, this eccentric behavior is relatively normal in the County — that is, if you’re meant to be a Spook. Taking on the title of a Spook means dedicating your life to ridding the world of “the dark”, meaning the evil forces that seek to harm humans. Burning witches, running from boggarts, saving possessed children, eating hearts. It’s all in a day’s work for a Spook. Master Gregory has been fighting the good, drunken fight for several years now, and with his arch nemesis Mother Malkin back on the loose, it’s time to train a worthy apprentice to stand at his side.

Enter Tom Ward. A young, poor man who has spent his entire life on his parent’s farm is suddenly called to duty and told he has to learn everything the previous apprentice gathered over ten years in the span of a single week. With the witch Malkin back at full speed and set to destroy the world during the spell of a blood moon, time is of the essence. and this odd couple doesn’t have a minute to spare. Ward must train to be a skilled fighter, retain the knowledge of potions and their purposes, and rise to the occasion of filling the Spook’s shoes if he falters before the final showdown. With little time to prepare and a powerful witch and her friends at the helm of a disaster, will Tom be able to accept the challenge presented before him, and fulfill his destiny as the seventh son of the seventh son? Or will he become a slave to the darkness, and fall prey to the powers of Malkin, like so many before him?

Based on the novel The Spook’s Apprentice by Joseph Delany, Seventh Son is set up to be the perfect popcorn flick. Tom and Gregory travel across the countryside, helping those in need of supernatural aid, as they slowly but surely make their way to the ruins where Malkin, her fellow witches, and her deadly assassins reside. With people turning into dragons and a mumbling Jeff Bridges sputtering knowledge of devious spirits between sips of his flask, it had all of the elements to be a fun, kooky fantasy film that’s worth a watch if you feel like heading to the theater and forgetting about the real world for a while. However, a  plethora of plot holes, and mostly mediocre performances by pretty much everyone involved knocked this film down a few pegs, taking it from an entertaining start to an anticlimactic end.

Ben Barnes is simply forgettable. Any handsome brunette tan enough to be a farm boy could’ve occupied this role, and it really wouldn’t have made a difference. Unfortunately for Barnes, he’s quickly outdone by the previous apprentice, Kit Harington. Harington, although his time on film is brief, delivers such a solid performance that when it’s time for Barnes to replace him, the unavoidable comparison only helps to highlight Barnes’ expressionless face. Aside from his performance, there simply wasn’t enough of a backstory given to really get behind his character. We know that he’s the seventh son of the seventh son, and for some reason that means that he receives visions of the future, and is bound for greatness, but why? What exactly is the significance of his birth, and why isn’t it explained more thoroughly in all of the time that Gregory spends training Tom? It’s like the filmmakers expected audiences to read the book before they saw the movie, or at least do additional research to fully understand the plot. Obviously, when adapting a novel to film, certain elements are bound to hit the cutting room floor, but it is the filmmakers’ job to transfer a clear and concise story, and that job simply wasn’t fulfilled.

Where the movie succeeds are in the moments when it’s really obvious that Jeff Bridges is having a wonderful time. When Bridges is fighting a man with his beer in hand, winning with ease while managing not to spill a drop, or when he’s muttering slurred sentences like “fucking witches”, the film hits its peak, and for a few moments, realizes exactly what it is and has fun with it. When Seventh Son is able to laugh at itself, it finds its grace, and is the movie it’s meant to be. It would be beneath me to deny that I enjoyed the epic dragon battle, even if I wasn’t entirely satisfied with the outcome. However, the overly melodramatic moments weigh the film down, especially because there isn’t enough of an origin story for these characters to feel any real attachment to them when they’re picked off. It’s revealed that Gregory and Malkin were once in love, but the subject is barely touched upon, and when they finally battle as enemies in the end, no heart strings are tugged, because we don’t feel any connection to these people or their past. Not only is this disappointing for the finale, but also because Jeff Bridges and Julianne Moore share such terrific chemistry, and a Big Lebowski reunion is wasted on poor screenwriting and a lackluster final showdown.