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.
I first heard about The Mandela Catalogue through a couple of nephews who were obsessed with the ARG’s sinister mythology. It was only after watching Wendigoon’s in-depth analysis of the series that I realized just how deep this rabbit hole goes.
In fact, I’d already been exposed to the nightmarish visuals of Alex Kister’s YouTube creation for years at that point without even realizing that it was the origin of several viral “cursed images” and spooky memes that had leaked into the wider internet – with this viral element actually being a part of the Catalogue’s overarching narrative.
Flash-forward to 2026 and the unprecedented success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms has led to Hollywood betting on horrific internet properties with existing fanbases, which means that Kister’s unique hybrid of both religious and analog horror is finally headed to the big screen with a script written by Kister himself alongside Tyler Clifton.
While this news shouldn’t be too surprising if you’ve been keeping up with the ongoing success of The Mandela Catalogue (both myself and Wendigoon having previously predicted that the series would inevitably make the jump to theaters one day), plenty of horror fans are likely confused as to why so many folks are excited for what appears to be a Hollywood adaptation of a series of creepy .jpeg images under a VHS filter.
With that in mind, today I’d like to invite fellow readers to accompany me as I explore the origins of Alex Kister’s viral hit and attempt to explain exactly why we should all be excited about the Mandela Catalogue adaptation!
From High School Writing Project to Internet Horror Phenomenon
The first seeds of The Mandela Catalogue were sown when Kister was still in high school and developed a writing project subverting religious tropes in a world where biblical history had been altered by demonic forces. A little while later, Kister came across an analog horror contest on Reddit and decided to adapt his ideas into a standalone video where he would edit a religious kids’ cartoon –The Beginner’s Bible: The Nativity, to be specific- into something far creepier. This is how the iconic Overthrone video was born, with this viral short film taking on a life of its own as fans demanded more eerie content from Kister.
Though the video was originally meant to be a one-and-done sort of affair, with Kister actually regretting some of its primitive visuals and considering the editing amateurish and “YouTube-Poop-like” when compared to his current standards, fan reaction and free time during the COVID-19 pandemic encouraged the (then) seventeen-year-old filmmaker to continue producing content set in this same world. The Mandela Catalogue name was inspired by the Mandela Effect conspiracy theory, as the series would slowly begin to explore the subtle horror of alternate histories.
Inspired by existential dread brought on by extended periods of quarantine as well as a personal crisis of faith, Kister continued to expand his alternate timeline where the rise of Christianity had been prevented by what was presumably the Devil disguised as the Archangel Gabriel. This alternate course of fictional events led to the existence of certain paranormal anomalies that had come to be accepted as “normal” by the 1990s, which is why most of the series’ supernatural horror is presented in such a matter-of-fact manner.
Most of this background information and religious lore is delivered by increasingly cryptic broadcasts and in-universe PSAs, as well as the occasional found footage video, that often have to be decoded by clever viewers. Of course, it’s the consistently disturbing imagery that made the series so popular – much of which was originally created by Kister on a smartphone!
The Alternates: Horror’s Most Unsettling Modern Monsters
The show’s early episodes mostly take place within the fictional Mandela County in Wisconsin and depict life in a world where demonic entities are capable of using media to enter our reality. This process usually involves scaring victims into killing themselves and then repurposing their bodies as horrific doppelgangers referred to as “Alternates”. This terrifying phenomenon has become so common that local police already have specialized procedures in place to deal with the issue, though this usually consists of simply ignoring calls for help so as to avoid spreading so-called “Metaphysical Awareness Disorder” any further.
Over time, Kister would expand this mythology and incorporate different kinds of Alternates into the mix, though the story never stopped deconstructing religious concepts. The series’ second volume exponentially increased both video quality and the overall narrative scope as we began to follow the lives of characters who had already grown up in this dystopian hellscape where the government is forced to prohibit religion, television, and even mirrors in the hopes of mitigating the damage done by the ongoing invasion of otherworldly entities.
The really interesting part comes into play when you realize exactly how the Alternates make use of scary media in order to spread their demonic influence, with the analog horror of it all being a diegetic part of the story and something of a memetic trap orchestrated by the false Gabriel.
I particularly appreciate how some characters begin to suspect that there’s something wrong with their version of reality and that things weren’t meant to play out this way, especially when Mark utters the haunting line “who have I been praying to all this time?” That’s why I think The Mandela Catalogue is an effective piece of religious horror even if you don’t subscribe to the Christian worldview, as the mere idea of a world where evil has already won is a universally terrifying concept in and of itself. Not only that, but the series’ uncanny analog imagery alone is already worth the price of admission, as you’ve likely already noticed by looking at the pictures accompanying this article.
Why The Feature Adaptation Could Be Horror’s Next Big Success
It’s actually been a whole year since Kister first announced that he had been working on a feature-length screenplay for a Mandela Catalogue movie since 2022, with his proposed story following an ensemble of high-school graduates who uncover a supernatural conspiracy after the mysterious disappearance of a fellow student. This premise sounds similar to narrative elements present in the series’ second volume, but I’m pretty sure that Kister is going to go the Kane Parsons route and make the movie more of a spin-off than a re-imagining of its source material.
While notable Hollywood producers like Aaron B. Koontz, Scott Stuber, and Steven Spielberg himself are backing the upcoming project, I feel like there’s no one better to adapt this deeply personal exploration of faith and the dark side of communication than the person who first came up with it. That’s why I can’t wait to see Kister’s work on the big screen, as I have a feeling that this young filmmaker is the next one on the list about to make cinematic history – especially since this is clearly a passion project that has been in the works for years at this point!
That being said, there’s always a chance that the film could end up unleashing a fresh wave of Alternate incursions, but I guess that’s just a risk we’ll have to take.
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