SEASON OF THE WITCH Is A New Low For Nicolas Cage!
rating: 1.5
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Rule number one of basic filmmaking: dont name your film after an especially maligned Halloween sequel that has become only more infamously derided as the decades have passed. This is just the first of many mistakes occasionally-talented director Dominic Sena (Kalifornia and Swordfish, but also Gone in 60 Seconds and Whiteout) makes in Season of the Witch, a glorified straight-to-video bargain bin supernatural horror flick which may have settled the case for 2011's worst film before the year has even really begun, while being lent a whiff of false credibility by the baffling presence of the infuriatingly inconsistent Nicolas Cage. Behmen (Cage) is a 14th century Crusader who has recently returned home with his comrade, Felson (Ron Perlman), to find it ravaged by the terrible Black Plague. The Catholic church, adamant that the plague has been caused by a witch, Anna (Claire Foy), order the pair to escort her, a knight, a rowdy but tough criminal, and a priest, to a secluded abbey, where they will expiate the evil from her no doubt causing her death in order to apparently end the plague. Behmen, unconvinced of her guilt, however, will only see her dead if the charges against her are true, and despite some eerie goings on seemingly caused by her he cant escape the thought that something far more sinister is at play. Nicolas Cage has made a slew of bad movies in his years the majority of his worst being in the last decade, no doubt yet even his most criminal duds such as the dreadful The Wicker Man remake and Bangkok Dangerous were punctuated with an air of unintentional humour, aided by Cages apparently purposefully over-the-top performance in each. Regrettably theres no such luck in Season of the Witch, a film which has unsurprisingly been languishing on a studio shelf for about a year.Cages soporific performance ridiculous hairpiece aside adds little to a film not privy to even a single lick of irony, holding its hokey plot in a curiously high, self-serious esteem, sucking almost every scrap of entertainment value out like a vacuum as it does so.