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Season of the Witch (2011)
20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
Blu-ray Disc Released: 6/28/2011
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Review by Mike Long, Posted on 6/29/2011
Poor Nicolas Cage. Nearly 30 years ago, he was a cult actor. 16 years ago, he was an Oscar winner who became a box-office draw in action movies. Less than a decade ago, he was nominated once again for an Oscar. But, as the 00's progressed, the quality of Cage's work began to dwindle. In 2008, it was revealed that Cage had tax issues and owed the IRS a large sum of money. Since that time, it's become a popular pass-time to accuse him of simply moving from paycheck to paycheck. (There's even a recurring sketch on Saturday Night Live where Andy Samberg spoofs Cage.) At the beginning of this year, Cage appeared in two new movies which were released within five weeks of each other. The first was Season of the Witch, which was followed by the abysmal
Drive Angry. Surely an actor as seasoned as Cage couldn't appear in two super stinkers in a row.Cage stars in Season of the Witch as Behman, a 14th century knight who, along with his friend, Felson (Ron Perlman), has left the Crusades. Once a dedicated warrior, Behman has become disillusioned with fighting in God's name. Trekking cross-country, Behman and Felson come across a village which is overrun with the plague. They are recognized as deserters and placed in jail. The local religious leader, Cardinal D'Ambroise (Christopher Lee), makes them an offer. A girl (Claire Foy) has been accused of being a witch and it is believed that she is the source of the plague. If Behman and Felson will transport the witch to a remote abbey, where the monks can deal with her, they will be forgiven. They are joined on their journey by a holy man, Debelzaq (Stephen Campbell Moore), a swindler, Hagamar (Stephen Graham), and a knight, Eckhart (Ulrich Thomsen). At first, Behman makes the journey simply to gain his freedom, but at the perilous trip continues, he begins to get involved in the situation. The girl appears to be sweet and innocent, but undeniably weird things are happening. The truth will be revealed when the group reaches the abbey.
Given Cage's recent track record and the box office receipts for Season of the Witch, one may expect it to be a total train wreck. (While it's failed to turn a profit while in theaters, it did better than some of Cage's other latter day offerings.) It's not a complete disaster, but it quickly becomes apparent that the movie has some huge flaws. First of all, it's underwritten. The story by Bragi Schut plays more like a first draft than something which is ready to be a mid-budget feature film. There is only moderate characterization and the movie goes from scene to scene with no sense of function. Also, it can't seem to decide in what genre it wants to be. It's not really a horror film and it's not really an action/adventure film. The finale leans more towards horror, but it also feels like Dungeons & Dragons. The script makes a huge mistake by giving the mid-section of the movie little to do, much like the recent
Wake Wood. Once the basic premise is introduced, we know that the girl either is going to be a witch or she isn't, and it's difficult to get involved enough to truly care either way.The movie's pacing is also quite slack. Although the running time is around 94 minutes, the movie feels much longer. Director Dominic Sena has never made a good movie, and Season of the Witch continues that trend as we see that he doesn't know how to handle either the dialogue scenes or action scenes. This is one of those movies where something is typically happening, and yet it's very boring. (I came close to dozing off a few times.)
The movie is very similar to last month's
Black Death, and I had the same question with Season of the Witch that I did with that movie -- Did people really talk like that back then? As a writer, I like to think that I have an ear for dialogue and there is some wacky stuff said here. I wasn't around in the 1300s, but much of what their saying doesn't ring as accurate. Maybe this was a way of adding a fun element to the movie?To say the least, Season of the Witch misses the boat. I like the idea of a classic prisoner transfer movie, much like something out of a Western, taking place in the plague-ridden middle ages. The movie has a good cast and despite the bad dialogue and his Nickelback haircut, Cage is good here, turning on the crazy when he needs to. However, the movies unsteady mixture of adventure and the supernatural never gels. It's interesting to note that as unfinished as the movie feels now, the original cut was apparently much worse, as a new opening and finale were tacked on. Medieval horror with a religious paranoia slant could yield a good movie, but Season of the Witch isn't it.
Season of the Witch made me question why such a big rolling cage was deemed necessary on Blu-ray Disc courtesy of 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment. The film has been letterboxed at 1.85:1 and the Disc contains an AVC 1080p HD transfer which runs at an average of 38 Mbps. The image is very sharp and clear, showing no distracting grain and no defects from the source material. A prologue shot is notably dark, but for the remainder of the film the image is never overly dark or bright. Colors remain muted throughout, as this is a very black and brown movie, but flames look good. The level of detail is above average, showing off textures on objects. The Disc carries a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track which runs at 48 kHz and an average of 4.0 Mbps. The track provides clear dialogue and sound effects. I don't know, something wasn't right about this track. Despite the relatively high bitrate average, I wasn't overly impressed with the sound. I had to turn the volume up higher than usual, and despite some scenes filled with monsters and such, there wasn't an abundance of surround sound or subwoofer effects. We do get some nicely subtle stereo effects when the group is in the forest and the musical cues sound fine.
The Season of the Witch Blu-ray Disc contains only a few extras. The Disc offers seven DELETED SCENES which run about 10 minutes. These are all very brief and incidental, save for the "unrated prologue", which is only slightly different from what is seen in the finished film. "Becoming the Demon" (8 minutes) takes us behind the scenes to see the visual effects which were used to create the monster in the film. "On a Crusade" (6 minutes) explores the big action scenes from the film's openings, which we learn we added after initial photography. We see how stuntwork and extras were handled and the fights planned. The "Alternate Ending" (9 minutes) shows that the big special effects of the finale were added later. As noted above, apparently the original cut of the film was really lame. The final extra is the THEATRICAL TRAILER for the film.
Review by Mike Long. Copyright 2011.