Movie review: Season of the Witch

Posted on March 26th, 2011 by Richard Catto 1,520 views

I sat down with anticipation to watch this Medieval Crusader thriller last night expecting a lot more than I got. The concept and the storyline seemed exciting and inspired but ultimately failed to deliver the entertainment it promised. Here’s how the tale goes…

Two Knights in the Crusader wars against the Islamic Saracen hordes, played by Nicolas Cage and Ron Perlman are fully committed to the Church’s righteous cause until they are ordered to attack a village and everyone in it and end up murdering defenceless women and children. Cage confronts the Pope’s representative and tells him what a useless tard he is for committing such a senseless atrocity in the Church’s name. Unsurprisingly, the religious cockhead refuses to apologise and agree that he should immediately kill himself and Cage and Perlman tell him to go fuck himself and desert the retarded Christian army on the spot.

They make their way back home and find their homeland stricken with a horrendous plague that disfigures its victims with green boils all over their bodies and faces. The priests have diagnosed the cause of the plague as originating from witches and the cure is to apprehend them, hang them, drown them and repeat mindless Latin verses over their corpses. This will apparently solve the problem. Illustrated manuscripts with the Latin children’s rhymes are in the possession of priests and monk(ey)s and contain exorcism rites for witches and demons and hob-goblins and garden knomes and fairies and other such kak.

In the beginning of the film three women are accused of witchcraft, co-erced to confess and repent and then murdered by hanging and drowning. The priest who did the deed is informed by one old crone that he will die in hell. After the murder, one of the women rises from the dead, kills the priest and burns his little book of magick.

Our two heroes enter a town in search of good horses and provisions but are recognised as deserters and arrested. They are brought to the Church. The top religious dog in the town has been smited (sic) with the plague and he has a hard on for justice. A young girl, a witch of course, has been apprehended and she is, of course, the cause of all their problems. They make the knights a deal: take the girl to a remote monastery for the monk(ey)s to perform some mindless ritual on her (which no doubt ends with her being burned alive) and they’ll pardon them for desertion, or they can be hanged. So, ja, our boys are no dooses so they take the deal.

On the road to nowhere are the two knights, a girl in a box on a cart, another knight, a priest, a swindling ugly bastard of a guide and a young fool who wants to be a knight like Cage and Perlman, because everyone wants to be as ugly as them (especially Perlman). At the first stop, the third knight buys it after a bit of a chase through a plague ridden village (the girl gets out of her box, don’t ask how). The girl gets put back in her box and the guide leads them to a rotten old wooden and rope affair that barely resembles a bridge. As they get across it, it collapses into the chasm. The girl in a box also manages to demonstrate supernatural strength by rescuing the young fool from falling to his death, catching him with one hand and raising him up with the same. Nobody bats an eyelash at this happening, because everyone knows that young waif like girls can lift grown men using only one hand. Happens all the time… in the movies.

They then enter a deep foreboding mist shrouded forest called Wormwood. They immediately get lost and while trying to find the path through it, get attacked by big bad wolves who snarl and howl and go all werewolf on the knights’ asses. After beating off the first wave of wolf attacks, Cage loses his nerve and orders everyone to get on their horses and gallop blindly through the mist shrouded forest in an attempt to get away from what looked like about 5 wolves (after they had killed 20+). Makes sense to me. The wolves jump on the guide and chow down. Cage and Perlman decide that they can’t possibly beat off a whole 5 wolves and turn tail. When they turn around, they are suddenly and magickly (and I mean this sarcastically) out of the forest with their destination, the monastery, on the hill before them.

They make their way to the monastery and enter it to find all the monk(ey)s inside dead of the plague, except one, who, with his last gasp, points to the magical Latin manuscript that contains the magic words that must be spoken to fix witches and demons and what have you. The priest commences with his witch exorcism rite and immediately discovers that it doesn’t appear to be working. The young woman transforms herself into a big ugly bat like creature which is apparently a demon. At this point, this movie takes a turn for the worse and becomes another “From Dusk till Dawn” except instead of battling vampires, our fearless heroes must battle demons. It’s quite difficult to tell them apart actually.

Everyone dies, except the young fool and the now exorcised girl who bury the knights and the priest and ride off together. And that’s it. Oh and apparently the plague ends. If you like fantasy and bullshit mixed in with religious mumbo jumbo, this film is for you. Otherwise skip.

Tags: Claire Foy, Nicolas Cage, Ron Perlman, Season of the Witch
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