I think I have a guilty fetish of watching Nicholas Cage movies you know will be bad. It’s not to say Season of the Witch is terrible, but I just want to describe this fetish even more. Nicholas Cage is realistically and by pure math should be probably more miss, than hit, but nevertheless you keep watching him. My favorite movies of his are the National Treasure franchise, only because I’m a big sucker for adventuring and treasuring. So maybe it’s be sheer coincidence he was cast at all in those movies and I happened to like them. Movies like “Gone in 60 Seconds”, “Con-Air”, “The Rock” and “Face/Off” are guilty pleasures. Realistically terrible movies but enjoyable nonetheless. You have the odd cool movies, with supporting roles such as Kick-Ass and The Sorceror’s Apprentice. Movies mindlessly fun enough to enjoy. Then you have like “Knowing”, “Ghost Rider”, “Next” and “Bangkok Dangerous”. All movies that will probably be bad but you still end up watching them because in the back of your mind you’re maybe thinking about “Lord of War” and “The Weather Man”. But then realize it won’t be that serious of acting and divert all the way back to “It Could Happen to You”, only realizing you’ve gone too far in your referential material then find yourself back in the late 90s and land somewhere in the 2000s to anyone of the films of his you did enjoy. It also doesn’t help that I really like the National Treasure movies. Both of which could be in another person’s movies you know are bad list.
As such that brings us to Season of the Witch. To it’s credit the movie isn’t as predictable as I thought it would be. It’s mildly disappointing as well and confusing. I’ll get to that in a bit. But once again it’s bad but only entertaining enough to watch but you still leave the theater knowing… yes that was a bad movie. The recommendation to others will to be watch this movie on the cheap or rent it at best. It’s not bad enough to say, one should completely and utterly avoid it. I do think it’s watchable but it’s not without personal complaints. I actually think this should just be called the Nicholas Cage factor.
Yes, that’s exactly what I’ll call it. You see a movie you know will be bad but by some circumstance end up watching it anyway.
I’m going to have to spoil some things here and I think it’s more so my care for the film in general. It’s worth spoiling perhaps to save others the time? Anytime you see Ron Perlman cast in a supporting role. As awesome as the guy is, you know that if this dude is in a supporting role he is not surviving at the end of the film. It’s like movie law. So at this point you know you’ll only get so much Ron Perlman, watching him in a supporting role is just like counting down until his characters bites the dust. Then once you see him die in the film, which you already knew was going to happen. It’s like… well I knew that was going to happen, so I can’t feel anything about it. I like you Ron Perlman, but why do you die so easily in films! It’s like the ensign in Star Trek wearing the red shirt, you know that guy is going to die in that episode! Unless Ron Perlman is Hellboy, cast as a lead in another movie, he is going to die. But if you do the math, what other lead roles does Ron Perlman play? As such, you know Ron Perlman is going to die. You like his demeanor, you like his unique look, you like how he carries himself, you immediately like whatever character he plays but you know the guy won’t be around in the film to the end. In that sense the story becomes predictable character wise, it’s not only him as the storyline progresses and the characters we’re being exposed more and more towards. You know certain things will happen. To this movie’s credit stuff happens in a nature that it’s a slow progression and somehow the film has balanced things enough to make it enjoyable. But it’s still a bad movie.
If you’ve seen the trailer the storyline basically follows Nicholas Cage and Ron Perlman escorting a witch to an Abbey of monks where she will be judged for being a witch. Supposedly she is the cause of the plague which has stricken the lands and by some events Cage and Perlman accept the role. How/why they end up doing what they’re doing is apart of their character development which basically happens over a prologue montage. To the movie’s added credit to sell the idea of the witch, the movie starts off by setting up the tone quite well. I did like how the movie started as immediately going in I did not know what to expect. Was this going to be a PG, PG-13, or a surprise R movie? Was it going to be a thriller, horror, adventure? To my surprise this movie was immediately setup as 14A, with a thriller/adventure tone with scary scenes and a healthy dose of horror. Which was really surprising for me. However the horror isn’t carried enough through the movie and the pacing becomes about a poorly crafted story of a journey from one town to the Abbey of monks. That’s the entire film, watching like 6 people travel. There are a total of two events that happen on the journey, that’s it. My brother gave a good point as I caught the movie with him. If you’re going to have the entire movie about just the journey, you cannot just have only two things happen. In this case the movie doesn’t fully setup the lore of the witch until the very end, when reasons why are described and secrets are revealed. So basically the turning point, the final act all happen at the same time and the movie is over. You really got to wonder how stories are crafted and where at some point someone on the team actually says “this is an awesome idea” and says it ok to make a movie out of.
In a period piece you begin to expect certain things, like how people talked. Then again it could just be misinterpretation of how people actually talked back then. I don’t know but in all the referential material I’ve seen, people in the 1300’s do not say “Shit” or “Let’s get the hell out of here”, lines like that. Because that’s what you hear in Season of the Witch and it becomes detracting slightly. It’s like A Knight’s Tale, that movie knew it was a period piece and talked in what is supposedly the appropriate language style but still decided to break the rules and pretend it was a modern movie while set in a certain period. Season of the Witch has dialogue which does not feel like it belongs in the movie. Hence the confusion. It never does anything to clarify this issue either. It just does it because maybe someone thought the audience would be able to connect better. To me personally it does not make sense. I was actually expecting to see a giant twist at the end revealing the movie was actually Assassin’s Creed and the reason why they were speaking like they were speaking is because Nicholas Cage and Ron Perlman were from the future and reliving lives in the 1300’s. The dialogue doesn’t happen all the time, so this type of twist couldn’t have been possible. However at the beginning they just talk like they talk and then the dialogue becomes more comedic relief which is actually a bad idea as well. Anyway that’s my added notes on the movie.
I don’t expect whatever I’ve written here to make any real sense, but I wrote it. If you take away anything, it should be the Nicholas Cage factor: you see a movie you know will be bad but by some circumstance end up watching it anyway. That and that Ron Perlman in any supporting role will always die. There is a higher mathematical probability in play when his role is in an adventure type of movie.
