Seventh Son-Film Review
When the darkness falls the son will rise is what best describes the Seventh Son, a medieval fantasy that tells the story of Tom Ward (Ben Barnes) who is the seventh son of a seventh son: a rare genetic lineage that sets him on the path to becoming a Spook, a slayer of all things evil that have ever been known to haunt humans. He becomes the apprentice of begrizzled, alcohol-riddled John Gregory (Jeff Bridges), shortly after Mother Malkin (Julianne Moore), an evil witch, escapes her earthly prison to claim the world as her own. With only a week to go before the blood moon rises, Gregory has to train the frail but strong-willed Tom to become a powerful spook.
Things at first don’t go as planned as Tom refuses to be as ruthless at killing witches and banishing evil as his master. His situation gets even worse when he finds himself distracted by the charms of Alice (Alicia Vikander), a half witch half gypsy maiden who is Mother Malkin’s niece. She later proves that charm is indeed deceitful and beauty is fleeting when she betrays Tom by spying on him and his master and stealing his precious stone. We weren’t aware that humans alone could fight off evil spirits. But alas, what this movie tries to accomplish is to show that an old man and a dim-witted young boy can fight all these supernatural monsters with nothing but some stroke of luck, a fancy iron and special salt. But we suppose movies aren’t always meant to be realistic. In a movie where the supernatural world meets the natural world, we couldn’t help but wonder how this old man and this poor young boy were going to beat all these demons and incarnated witches without having any supernatural powers themselves. We feel a good movie is one that illustrates an almost impossible circumstance or adventure with as much realism as you can squeeze in. In the Seventh Son, too many things did not add up and we weren’t blown away. We also feel like the ending did not do much justice to the film. Yes, the film is not Oscar material but it is still entertaining and is not too predictable. The CGI effects are excellent and complement its 3D features making you feel like you have dragons coming at you and biting your head off. The acting is also on point and the script manages to get the audience to have a few laughs at the antics of master Gregory whose thirst for alcohol is just as much as his love for slaying witches. Barnes and Bridges make a great master and apprentice pair and play their roles effortlessly. Blood Diamond actor Djimon Hounsou is well-cast in his cameo role as a sexy dark, red-eyed evil assassin. Yet again he manages to draw one into the film even though his role is short lived. If you ask what our general opinion of the film is we think it is safe to say that Seventh Son is not entirely a flop, the action scenes are good, the cast is top notch but there seem to be a few glitches that just spoil the film and make it seem mediocre. Perhaps it is merely a case of a good plot and a less than average ending made it fun to watch but easy to forget.
