{"id":9449,"date":"2024-11-30T12:22:19","date_gmt":"2024-11-30T17:22:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=9449"},"modified":"2024-11-30T12:22:19","modified_gmt":"2024-11-30T17:22:19","slug":"season-of-the-witch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/11\/30\/season-of-the-witch\/","title":{"rendered":"Season of the Witch"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Season of the Witch <\/strong>(2011)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rogue\/Action-Adventure-Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 95 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG-13 (thematic elements, violence, gruesome images, disturbing content, scary moments)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Dominic Sena\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Bragi Schut\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Atli Orvarsson\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Amir Mokri\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: January 7, 2011 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Nicolas Cage, Ron Perlman, Stephen Campbell Moore, Stephen Graham, Ulrich Thomsen, Claire Foy, Robert Sheehan, Christopher Lee.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $24.8M (US)\/$91.6M (World)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0I can\u2019t believe it\u2019s been ten years since the release of Season of the Witch<\/strong>, a goofball sword-and-sorcery flick starring Nicolas Cage (Con Air) and Ron Perlman (Hellboy) as medieval knights charged with taking an alleged witch to a monastery to stand trial for her supposed part in the Black Plague. It stands out in my mind because it\u2019s one of the first titles I reviewed for Movie Guy 24\/7. I didn\u2019t have high hopes for it. Not only did it come out during that cinematic wasteland commonly known as January, it was also the first release of the new year, so we\u2019re talking potential double trouble here. Despite all signs indicating a great big stinker, I actually liked Season of the Witch<\/strong> and still do a decade later.<\/p>\n

\u00a0In the prologue (set in 13th<\/sup> century Villach), three women found guilty of witchcraft are executed by hanging and drowning. When the town priest returns later to perform a sacred ritual from the Book of Solomon, one of the dead witches springs back to life, burns the book and kills the priest. The story jumps ahead to the 14th<\/sup> century where we meet Sir Behmen (Cage) and Sir Felson (Perlman), two knights fighting in the Crusades. After witnessing the slaughter of innocent women and children, they decide this is no longer the life for them and desert the Order.<\/p>\n

\u00a0On the way home, they pass through a village heavily affected by the Plague. They\u2019re arrested after somebody recognizes them as deserters. They\u2019re taken to the Cardinal (Lee, The Curse of Frankenstein) who gives them a choice. Either they help escort an accused witch known only as \u201cThe Girl\u201d (Foy, Unsane) to a faraway monastery for her trial or face execution for the crime of desertion. She\u2019s blamed for bringing the Plague to the village. If she is indeed a witch, the monks at this monastery can perform a ritual that will supposedly stop the Plague. They\u2019re the only ones who can help as they have the only remaining copy of the Book of Solomon.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Behmen and Felson are joined on their mission by a priest, Debelzaq (Moore, The Bank Job); another knight, Eckhardt (Thomsen, Hitman); young aspiring knight Kay (Sheehan, The Umbrella Academy) and swindler Hagamar (Graham, Snatch) who\u2019s charged with guiding the group through dangerous territory that includes a dark forest.<\/p>\n

\u00a0For all its inherent dumbness, Season of the Witch<\/strong> isn\u2019t all that bad. Sure, it\u2019s corny as hell and abounds with clich\u00e9s like the obligatory scene of the characters precariously making their way across a rickety old wooden bridge suspended between two high cliffs with raging waters and jagged rocks below. Naturally, they have horses and the cage transporting the girl to add to their woes. I think we all know how this scenario will ultimately play out. Even so, Season of the Witch<\/strong> is pretty entertaining.<\/p>\n

\u00a0It helps that Dominic Sena (Gone in Sixty Seconds) never seems to take the material too seriously. It\u2019s not a somber affair like Black Death or The Seventh Seal even though the director said he was largely inspired by the 1957 Ingmar Bergman classic. He merely touches on austere matters like killing in the name of God and the inherent hypocrisies of organized religion without diving in too deep. He\u2019s more interested in action and special effects. Sena manages a decent blend of action-adventure and horror with some decent special effects. The battle scenes in the introductory montage are decent despite the wild overediting. Some of Season of the Witch <\/strong>is cool in a silly kind of way. To give you an idea of what to expect, there\u2019s an exorcism in the climax.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The acting in Season of the Witch<\/strong> is just about what you\u2019d expect. Cage reins it in a little bit, resisting the urge to devour the scenery like when he\u2019s in bad guy mode (Kiss of Death, Face-Off). He gets off one good line, \u201cNo man has spilled more blood in God\u2019s name than I. A benevolent God would not ASK such things of men!\u201d Now imagine Cage saying it in his own inimitable way. He\u2019s clearly having fun here as is co-star Perlman, always a reliable actor. His unconventional looks once again serve him well. Foy, in her first role, does good work as the supposedly bewitched young woman.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Season of the Witch <\/strong>is a B-movie at heart. It doesn’t seek to enlighten the audience about heavy matters associated with the Black Plague. It\u2019s a goofy, giddy popcorn movie that I found myself enjoying against all better judgment. It took me back to when I was a 14YO movie geek obsessed with sword-and-sorcery movies. I sat there liking the swinging swords and dopey dialogue. It\u2019s hardly an art film, but why should it be? It\u2019s all in the spirit of fun.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Season of the Witch (2011)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rogue\/Action-Adventure-Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 95 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG-13 (thematic elements, violence, gruesome images, disturbing content, scary moments)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Dominic Sena\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Bragi Schut\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Atli Orvarsson\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Amir Mokri\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: January 7, 2011 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Nicolas Cage, Ron Perlman, Stephen Campbell Moore, Stephen Graham, Ulrich Thomsen, Claire Foy, Robert Sheehan, Christopher […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9675,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-action-adventure","category-guilty-pleasures"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/Season-of-the-Witch-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9449"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9449\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9677,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9449\/revisions\/9677"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}