Season of the Witch 2011

Season of the Witch 2011 Movie Review

Enjoyable B-Movie Popcornfest

I walked out of the theater so thrilled to have spent my money on a Nicholas Cage movie. Its not often that happens. 

I heard from a unenthusiastic review (one of numerous scathing reviews out there, as anyone with the internet can tell) about the on screen shenanigans with Nick Cage and Ron Perlman were so enjoyable that it made the rest of the movie bearable. Going in with that anticipation, I found myself not only pulled into their characters' fun and convincing friendship but also into an intense and yes even edge-of-your-seat suspenseful movie. I forgot about my troubles for the day and enjoyed a good adventure.

It was inspired, yes, by DnD, video games, and a number of other swords and sorcery books and movies that preceded it, but it is its own story. In a market saturated with sequels, prequels, reboots, comicbook diarrhea, etc... it's nice to see a story that is it's own, however simple.

Yes it plays by the numbers. You know guys will die. Hell, you probably know who and in what order, if you've seen movies of it's ilk. You know there is a supernatural bad guy. And you know there will be one liners, oh are there ever one-liners! But the characters are fun to watch, even a little engaging. You may not want to see them die. I didn't. They weren't a group of scum with a bullseye for heraldry. The enemy was threatening and tricky, a real danger to our protagonists. And the one liners were, gasp, funny! Yes, even Nicholas Cage is worth the price of admission here. If this was "just another paycheck" role for him, he looked like he was having a lot of fun with this roll. And I don't know about you, but I like to see my actors have fun in a movie that costs me 9-12 bucks to see..

It looses some points with me for the CGI. obvious CGI is obvious. But honestly the crispy gray CGI contrasting against a darker, colorful, moody lighting STILL didn't detract from the encounters or the climax. If you come to the movies to have CGI convince you that magic and demons are real, you come to the movies for jaded and asinine reasons. If you wanna see pretty visuals with a meandering pointless story, go see Tron. 

But if you wanna see a fun yet dark heroic adventure, go see Season of the Witch!