Season of the Witch

I think it's safe to say that Nicholas Cage has accepted that he isn't the most popular actor in Hollywood, so he'll do just about anything for a paycheck these days. Therefor, it's not that surprising that he took the lead role in Season of the Witch, a fantasy/horror/buddy/road trip hybrid of a snoozer.

Set in 14th century England, Cage and Ron Perlman play two Crusaders who've gone AWOL after realizing they've spilled too much innocent blood in the name of God. Unfortunately, the first town they stop in back home is suffering under the shadow of a deadly plague, a plague that the town has blamed on a young woman who happened to be passing through. The woman is accused of witchcraft and needs to be escorted to a monastery in the mountains where the monks will use their holy magic take her powers from her. Cage and Perlman are promised absolvement for their sins if they assist in the witch's transportation. But wait, isn't that what they went to the Crusades for? Ironyyyyyyy...

There's nothing particularly special about this movie. It's not completely horrible, but it's also not that great. It's just a boring waste of money that you probably won't even remember six months from now.

The plot in general is sadly predictable, and while the filmmakers want you to spend the whole time wondering whether the woman is a witch or not, the trailers kind of spoil it. That being said, Claire Foy does do a good job as the title character. So if you see this movie without having seen the trailer, her performance would probably seem a bit better.

Whenever Nicholas Cage was on the screen, I thought to myself, Thank God he's not trying to use an English accent, and whenever Ron Perlman was on screen, I thought, When is Hellboy 3 coming out? The pair does have a descent amount of chemistry in the film, but it's that cliche kind of chemistry that you see in any kind of buddy action movie. Their performances were pretty straight forward, cookie cutter, badass personas that plenty of lesser known actors could have done.

Speaking of English accents, how amazing is it that non-American actors like Christian Bale, Sam Worthington and Daniel Day-Lewis can play convincingly American characters, yet Americans can't be convincing as anything but Americans? Seriously, we have a huge outsourcing problem in this country. And I'm not talking about factory workers or call center employees, I'm talking about mainstream film acting jobs. It's kind of bizarre that the two main characters of a movie set in Medieval England are played by the only two non-European native actors in the cast.

Cage's character also keeps bringing up the fact that he no longer believes in the church and the imperfect men who run it. It's a common thing to see in religious themed movies these days; a protagonist who once believed in what preachers have told him who begins to question the church, due to an inner conflict of logic or emotion. I mean, sure, Christianity doesn't exactly have a model resume, and perhaps the church made a few mistakes over the last couple millenniums, but how much more anti-religious symbolism do we need? Then again, I guess a straight forward, zealous character would be too dry and politically incorrect for today's audience, wouldn't it?

While the technical side of the movie is good, including the special effects, Season of the Witch is an easy skip to make. It's a new year with plenty of other great stuff on the horizon, so just save your cash and ignore this one.