Movies
[Review] ‘Seventh Son’ Is Overly Melodramatic
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.
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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