Seventh Son

Title: Seventh Son (12)

Year: 2014

Running Time: 102 minutes

Director: Sergei Bodrov

Cast: Ben Barnes (Tom Ward), Julianne Moore (Mother Malkin), Jeff Bridges (Master Gregory) Notes: Won two awards.

Rating: 3

Thoughts:   The Queen of the evil witches escapes her decades long prison and kills the apprentice of the witch hunter that had captured her. He then seeks out the seventh son of a seventh son to become his new apprentice.

This has some strong lead actors to go with an excellent original story. But it just doesn't look very good.

The sets look tired and almost left over from something else, and the many CGI monsters don't convince. In addition, they have somehow managed to dilute the original narrative into a plodding script that just doesn't ever get going and has so many gaps in the back story that none of it makes that much sense.

Why did Gregory first capture Malkin? That seems vital to our later understanding.

Sadly those good actors have very little to go on. The film lurches from dull narrative sections to full-on and overblown action. It's all such a shame as the fragments of the original book that do remain are all that stop this spiraling off.

It wants to be an epic but forgets to actually be a good film first. This could be so much better.