Seventh Son Is An Epic Mess (Movie Review)
Gregory:
F***ing Witches.
Seventh
Son
is a mess of familiar ideas, talented actors, and competent (but mostly ugly)
visual effects; all brought together into one horrible movie. There are various ways to approach a review
for a movie like this, most of which involve making fun of it, and honestly,
this is the kind of movie that has been lined up to be made fun of. Having never looked all that engaging and
finally being released after a two-year delay, it is not as if I expected
something truly memorable. At the same
time though, Seventh Son is a film so
blinded by the thought that looking expensive equals awesome movie that it
makes any admittedly cool sight, such as a warrior with four arms, completely
devoid of the charm one could find in similar hack-and-slash medieval
adventures of yesteryear. Simply put:
this film is awful.
Jeff Bridges brings yet
another new layer to his True Grit accent
in an effort to bring Master John Gregory, the Spook, to life. In this film and the book series it was
inspired by, a spook is essentially a witch hunter. Master Gregory is seemingly one of the last
and clearly the best of his kind. He
moves from town to town, getting drunk and burning witches with his apprentice
Billy (Kit Harington); that is until he learns that his former
flame/so-evil-she-has-red-dreadlocks witch woman, Malkin (Julianne Moore), has
escaped her imprisonment and now plans to get her revenge (and probably take
over the world or something too, it’s a little hazy, as far as overall witch
plans go). This leads to the death of
Gregory’s apprentice, forcing him to seek out his next, who comes in the form
of Tom Ward (Ben Barnes), the seventh son of a seventh son. Witch slaying-training and adventure ensues.
As with any film, the
approach is key, and while Seventh Son
has the outline of a familiar hero’s journey story, almost nothing works thanks
to passive work done to separate this story from anything that has come before
it, poor dialogue with only mere attempts to make it better through a
brilliantly bad Jeff Bridges performance, a bland lead character, a
non-engaging villain (despite her fabulous make-up and costume design), a
laughable excuse for a co-starring female character/romantic interest, and
action sequences robbed of any urgency, given how ineffective all of the
so-called baddies seem to be at capturing and killing and old drunkard and his
young apprentice who has had all of a day to train in the art of throwing small
knives at things.
At this point, the
notion would be for one to either avoid this film in its entirety, go see it
and enjoy Seventh Son for being ‘so
bad it’s good’, or to go out, watch it, and come back with a response such as, “Oh
come on, it wasn’t that bad.” To speak
to that last crowd, good on you for spending the money or time to find a level
of enjoyment in this awful film. I would
much rather see the efforts of all of these actors/filmmakers (including
director Sergei Bodrov, who made the brilliant Mongol) put to much better use, which amounted to a film that the
average movie goer could have been really wowed by, rather than just accepting
of something they won’t think about after the next generic film that comes as
the result of this and films like this continuing to be funded, thanks to the
success of uninspired mediocrity or worse.
It is a cycle I dislike more than witches.
Getting back to the
film, I mentioned earlier a warrior with four arms. The fact that this thing’s screentime
essentially amounts to just enough moments to put into a trailer and onto a
poster for Seventh Son, it seems
clear enough how little effort there was in assembling a final version of this
film that allowed for an audience to invest in this universe. That is what garners Seventh Son a rating that is worse than just middling. All of these cool ideas, sets, and creature
designs are wasted, because the film does not know what to do with them. Apparently, the logic was, “who cares about
intrigue, when we can just hand Tom the Hero a magic staff and have him kill
everything in the same way.” Well I
cared and not even Jeff Bridges attempting to distract me with his accent,
facial hair, and bug-eyed reaction shots was enough to keep me laughing along
with the film’s incompetence.
So here we are, the
latest fantasy novel-based adventure film with a bland lead, a couple big name
stars, and decent visuals once again does nothing to expand upon the cinematic
landscape. It gives the target audience
something to look at in between the next big (and presumably better)
blockbuster and the films they already know and love, while I do my best to
justify why it is not simply okay to write it off as “meh” or “guilty pleasure”. There are “bad” films that do this well. Seventh
Son is just a bad movie.
Gregory:
*Medieval alcohol drinking noises*
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