Looking at Season of the Witch there are a lot of things that jump out at you as potential problems right away be it off the poster or the trailer but of all of these things the one that really kills the movie is indifference. It has its good points and bad points but the one consistant thing about the film is that, from beginning to end, it is pretty boring and you leave the theater with a shoulder shrug and all that is on your mind is how much you need to go to the bathroom.

Season of the Witch follows two knights, Behmen (Nicholas Cage) and Felson (Ron Perlman), who desert the Church’s service after realizing that they had slaughtered a score of innocents in the Crusades and that maybe murdering people wholesale for having different beliefs isn’t really that great of an idea. Upon returning to their native land they find a plague has settled in and is wiping people out left and right. The church blames a particular girl, not for being patient zero for the Black Plauge, but rather for being a witch who is spreading the plague because that is apparently what witches do. When Behmen and Felson are discovered as deserters they are offered a pardon by the church if they transport the girl to a particular monestary where the last copy of a book of incantations is kept. This book contains a particular incantation designed to fix the whole plauge business, which when you think about it is pretty handy. It makes me wonder if they just had incantations to cover any and all possible issues. Like if a Godzilla showed up, would they have something for his scaly ass? Anyway, Behmen and Felson, along with a priest who’s name sounds a lot like ‘the ball sack’ (Stephen Cambell Moore), another knight who had just been hanging around doing jack shit at the time Eckhart (Ulrich Thompson), a guide who knows the way because he is a swindler salesman Hangamar (Stephen Graham) and Kay (Robert Sheehan, an altar boy handy with a sword, set out to deliver the girl (Claire Foy) along what turns out to be the most treacherous forest and mountain pass on god’s green earth. Obviously the journey does not go well.

There is a fair amount of silliness in this movie but that is okay. Even if a movie is ‘bad’ if it is amusing or entertaining in it’s badness then it can still be a positive experience. Good-bad movies are honestly some of my favorites and I enjoy them quite a lot, especially with some friends and adult beverages. Unfortunately, Season of the Witch doesn’t manage to make it to Good-bad and simply stays Bad-bad and that is no good.

The biggest culprit here is the writing. There are a few good ideas offered up but the way the story unfolds is kind of a mess and the dialogue falls very flat. The story has some nice reality bending elements and there could have been a lot of room for ‘is she or isn’t she’ but it blows that particular load way too early. It has another twist up its sleeve which it thinks is just as interesting but when you finally get to that point and you see flashbacks to let you in on the set up it is irritating because I thought that was what I was meant to be taking from the story to begin with. There really isn’t a twist at all if you are paying attention, which is admittedly difficult since the movie does very little to hold that attention for any real length of time.

The dialogue is a real problem too because while it is sometimes clever it misses the mark way more often than it hits and it does so with punches so telegraphed you might as well be watching a WWE match. You can see what the screenwriter was going for and the relationships that were being set up and bolstered by the dialogue but that is a problem in and of itself. You shouldn’t be watching a movie and notice the wirter’s intentions. You shouldn’t be saying ‘oh I see what you were going for there’ as if he is checking off a list of things that need to be sorted out on the film’s outline. Good dialogue works because it does it’s job without the viewer ever noticing. If you have time to notice all the flaws in it or to see the strings as it were then it is failing completely to do it’s job. On top of that you have jarringly modern profanity and turns of phrase every now and then which makes things that much worse.

Some of the blame could fall to the actors as their performances are not great in a general sense. Their delivery across the board is a bit lifeless and without joy even in moments when levity is called for. This is odd to me because I am not sure where to assign blame. Dominic Sena is not one of my favorite directors but his other films have had much more life and much better performances, particularly as far as Nicholas Cage is concerned. Ron Perlman is one of my favorite character actors and I have seen him lift up substandard material like a body builder but even he comes across as pretty flat and lifeless here. So again I blame the writing as I have seen better from all other parties involved. That being said, it could have just been a paycheck for everyone and that is the problem. At the end of the day it doesn’t matter because the story fails to engage and the actors do nothing to help it along.

On the acting front I do applaud the production for not forcing American actors into bad English accents perferring the tradition of ‘if you can’t do an accent then just do your own well.’ That being said, I think that while I can accept Nicholas Cage speaking in a normal American accent I cannot accept Stephen Graham’s New York accent. Sure he is a swindler and all but his accent really brings you out of the movie. He is a great actor and does great work as Al Capone on Boardwalk Empire but seriously he needed to do at least a non-regional American accent if he wasn’t going to float an English one.

A lot of the above could have been saved had the action and effects been up to par but they weren’t. There were a couple of cool scenes where the knights own a bunch of wolves but by and large the action scenes were pretty standard and boring. The effects went from mildy bad to goddamn laughable by the end and made it really hard to take anything seriously. Also, I would like to note that witches acting like deadites from Army of Darkness really only works in a picture with that sensibility. In a film trying to be serious? Not so much.

Conclusion [4.5 out of 10]

If you are flipping channels one afternoon and this movie is on cable you might do well to stop and watch if nothing else is on. Any other viewing of this movie is going to leave you disappointed and bored. I wasn’t looking for great things from it but I was hoping it was at the very least Good-bad. Oh well, Nicholas Cage has another shot in a couple of months with Drive Angry. Hopefully that one is more fun.