On the shelf for a couple of years, SEVENTH SON is the latest in a series of miserable mish-mash of fantasy tropes Jeff Bridges has made recently (TRON: LEGACY, R.I.P.D., THE GIVER) in which he seems intent on stripping away all the goodwill he's built up among movie lovers over the decades and actively making us hate his mumbly ass. Yet again playing a guru mentor to a much younger, handsome apprentice type, Bridges is a "spook" named Master Gregory, whose mission it is to tame or destroy all manner of dark forces in the land and pass down this knowledge to his young charge.
Ben Barnes (Prince Caspian in the CHRONICLES OF NARNIA movies) is Tom Ward, the seventh son of a seventh son—a designation that apparently is best suited to become a spook—and the latest in a long, ill-fated line of apprentices that Gregory has snatched up, trained and lost to evil witches, ghosts, monsters, dragons and whatever else the filmmakers felt like tossing in the kitchen sink of nasty creatures that terrorize this unspecified place and time. The film opens with the meanest witch of all, Mother Malkin (an appropriately goth'ed-out Julianne Moore) escaping from her long imprisonment by Gregory and killing his previous trainee (Kit Harington, in what essentially amounts to a cameo).
Malkin quickly gathers her evil minions, which includes her witch sister (Antje Traue), her half-witch daughter Alice (Swedish actress Alicia Vikander from A ROYAL AFFAIR) and guys who can transform into mean animals, played by the likes of Jason Scott Lee and Djimon Hounsou. Both Malkin and her sister can transform into dragons because, I'm assuming, dragons were still hip when they started shooting this movie 27 years ago. Like all master-apprentice movie scenarios, the young one fails and fails and is reckless and emotional and can't perfect the use of weapons he's given, until miraculously, he gets it all. He also has no problem putting his small team (which includes a snaggle-toothed beast of burden named Tusk, played by John DeSantis) in danger by befriending and eventually falling in love with Alice—because the only thing missing from this steaming pile of a movie is a love story.
Featuring a fairly credible cast and directed by Oscar-nominated Russian filmmaker Sergey Bodrov (MONGOL: THE RISE OF GENGHIS KHAN, PRISONER OF THE MOUNTAINS) in what I believe is his first English-language movie, I was willing to go along with SEVENTH SON if there had been even a spark of creativity or originality. The creature designs and battle sequences are a confusing mess of swordplay, bad special effects, clanging metal, spirits, exploding witches and Bridges' odd facial hair. It's real easy to lose interest in this laughable, wobbly plot and the even more embarrassing performances from Bridges and Moore.
The entire time I was watching this, I couldn't help but think that I'd seen something remarkably similar not long ago, and then it hit me that certain plot elements were not unlike the highly forgettable 2011 Nicolas Cage vehicle SEASON OF THE WITCH, and then my mind found other places to wander as SEVENTH SON wound down. If you need further proof that February has become the new primary dumping ground for the studios, here you have it. This one is fairly appalling.
