The Seventh Son

Year of Release: 2014

Genre: Fantasy

    Run Time: 97mns

Age Rating: 12 (UK)
Directed By: Sergei Bodrov

**SPOILER ALERT**

Synopsis
An old witch hunter, also known as a Spook, called John Gregory (Jeff Bridges) loses his apprentice to the 'dark queen' Mother Malkin (Julianne Moore), a witch and his arch-enemy. After years imprisoned she has sworn to get her revenge against the Spooks' order. John Gregory has only until the next full moon to find and train his new apprentice, Thomas Ward (Ben Barnes), a boy destined to be a great hero. After finding Tom it's a struggle against time to defeat Mother Malkin before she gains her full power by way of the Blood Moon and destroys John and Tom, the only remaining forces fighting against the dark.

Review
Well, as I stated in my first blog post, I will only review films that hold a particular interest to myself and in the case of 'The Seventh Son' I was interested in seeing this film from the moment it came onto my radar back in 2012 when I first heard that it was in production as I am a longtime fan of the book series this film was based on. So when I say I was interested in seeing this film, I was interested by it in the same way one is interested in taking part in a Banzai Skydive, i.e. the initial excitement was enough to get you there but when you realise what may happen after seeing a preview clip on YouTube there are a lot of tears.

Now as is usually the case with a film based on a series of books this film was very divisive with it's audience. Divisive meaning, in this case, that it successfully divided it's audience into 'fans of the books' and 'people who have evidently never seen a decent fantasy film in their lives' as this film was a clichéd mess. In fact, this film is so loosely based on the original books that the one thing more ridiculous than the claim that anybody involved in this films' production actually read the source material is the fact that Disney thought that 'Titanic' needed a sequel. Before I drive my way through this review of a film that has more 'potholes' than the average British B road, I think the best thing to do would be to give you an idea of my reaction to the opening scenes. I shall do this through the medium of a pictured flow chart.

I went into this film truly hoping for the best as in my opinion the books on which it is based are some of the most original dark fantasy novels of recent years and I wanted, more than anything for this film to reflect that. However within the first minute I noticed a lot of inaccuracies that were so petty that no one, unfamiliar with the books would have cared. These inaccuracies were hit on the head for me, not even three minutes into the film, when a giant, badly animated dragon with the face of a surprised gargoyle erupted onto my screen. It was at this moment that I realised that I'd be watching the 2014 re-make of 'Eragon' for the next 97 minutes and not 'The Seventh Son', as dragons are so far from the lore of the Spooks books that I half expected the 'Dragonborn' to pop up midway through the film! Sadly even if I could have heaved my, already heavily damaged, opinion of this film over the fact that it was now apparently set in Skyrim as opposed to Lancashire (as the original books were), the worst was still to come.

Up until about 5 minutes into the film there isn't much in the way of dialogue. Actually, saying that, I would argue that there isn't much throughout the whole film as the script is so inconceivably poor that I am genuinely under the impression that a lot of it was copied and pasted from a fan fiction site. A good example of this is early in the film when Mother Malkin had captured John's previous apprentice, William Bradley (Kit Harrington, the Sean Bean of the film).

John Gregory: (In Latin) Let him go!
Mother Malkin: (In Latin) Why should I?
William Bradley: (Like Nicholas Cage in 'WickerMan') I can feel the dark! I can't stand   it!
John Gregory: Let him go! I will burn you!

The average romantic arc within a film
vs.
the romantic arc within 'The Seventh Son'

Well if that isn't the script for a rather camp pantomime then what is it? Another example of piss poor screen-writing on full display in this film is the full romantic arc of Tom and Alice (Alicia Vikander), his love interest. The arc being only slightly less shallow than 'Fifty Shades of Grey'. The couple have a short scene together near the start of the film when they meet for the first time that is punctuated by awkward stares, reminiscent of the infamous 'Twilight' stares of yesteryear, and very little dialogue. The next time the couple meet they get straight down to business, and after a quickie in a pile of hay they decide to barely speak to one another for the rest of the film. Now judging by the average romantic story arc being a rather bumpy up and down road before the characters even get to kiss let alone fornicate, I have a theory concerning the writers. Their single track mindset and overall shit screenplay from start to finish leads me to the conclusion that they are all either 13 year old boys who are just entering puberty or 40 year old divorced men who drive convertible Audis.

I found when watching this film that all the characters seemed unrelatable and had about as much depth and personality as a cardboard cut out of Kim Kardashian. Although this is partly due to the occasionally abysmal performances by even some of the more seasoned actors and actresses in this film, I sadly once again must complain about the writing staff. The prime example, as I have already mentioned, is Tom and Alice's rather "hit it and quit it" romance but there is another glaring example that I would like to bring up.

Tom's mam is a very pivotal character within the books, not so much in the films, however that isn't my problem in this case. His mam is in this film for approximately 10-15mns as a secondary character, and for this reason her character is not built upon at all throughout the whole film and remains very one dimensional. This was fine until approximately three quarters of the way through the film she carks it and all of a sudden Tom becomes teary and angry. Now, I didn't care one jot that she had died in fact I didn't realise who had died until Tom stated that it was indeed his mam. Try as I might I just couldn't seem to care that she died as she is such a poorly written character that she came across as more of a footnote. A footnote that was used as a cheap plot device to spur on the main character on to actually do something within the film other than shack up with Alice. Just the sheer fact that I couldn't relate to the main character as he grieved for his mother says it all about the quality of writing in this film.

On that note I have a sneaking suspicion that its not just the writers that are comprised of a team of horny 13 year olds as the casting crew made truly awful choices when handing out roles. The worst of which in my opinion was the casting of Mother Malkin. Now don't get me wrong, Julianne Moore is great in films like 'The Big Lebowski' and 'Crazy,Stupid,Love', but to cast her as a witch who is centuries old and meant to resemble a dried up slug is ridiculous. That's not to mention that she plays the character like an over-the-top Power Rangers villain when shes meant to be a mute, fetid but nonetheless foreboding character. It is my belief, therefore, that the casting crew made a beeline for women who look good in low cut necklines so their movie posters would be prettier. I am sad to say that sexualizing a witch/slug monster is only the tip of the iceberg of problems that is this film's casting.

Ben Barnes as Jailbait Tom.

Ben Barnes, 32 at the time of release, plays Tom, a twelve year old boy. A boy who in this film has sex with Alice a twelve year old girl, played by Alicia Vikander, 25 at the time of release. When looking at it this way its rather disturbing because, whilst surprisingly accurate to certain parts of the UK, twelve isn't exactly an age you want to portray characters having sex at. In addition to this, Jeff Bridges, yet another 'The Big Lebowski' alumni, makes an appearance as John Gregory, yet sadly misses the mark in this film adding to his more recent pile of failures that include the likes of  'R.I.P.D' . Whilst I believe that, in terms of the way he looks, he was cast perfectly, as he is almost the exact replica of how I had envisioned the character,  he shoots completely off target in his portrayal of the Spook. His incarnation of the Spook is a mean spirited drunk, a man who is more reminiscent of a crappy version of Jackie Chan's Drunken Master, as opposed to the down to earth  humble man he is in the books. For this reason, along with the fact that the accent he attempts sounds like a cosplay Gandalf, I find this character too disagreeable to feel any real investment in his character's plight.

In conclusion I feel that this film was a let down from the first scene to the last as it had so much potential. For the most part I'd look to the writers to blame for this film's failure as they had such strong source material to work with and it's my honest belief that, had they stuck to the original storyline, this film would have been vastly improved. However, this film is yet another example of Hollywood taking a story (that would be best left to it's native country's film industry to produce), sapping all of it's character from it and leaving it as a hollow husk of what it could have been. I also feel that it should have been exclusively an all English cast with age appropriate casting of all characters, as opposed to the mess of questionable ages and accents that it turned out to be. Finally I'd just like to add that, even though I personally have nothing positive to really say about this film, and would actively discourage any fans of the books from watching it, I will say that if a person has not seen many fantasy films before, then this film may act as a decent stepping stone to introduce them to this genre.

Scoring:

Writing:       ✪✫✫✫✫
 Acting:        ✪✪✫✫✫                                                          
Casting:       ✪✫✫✫✫
Enjoyability:✪✫✫✫✫

Final Score: 5

1-5: Not Fit for Human Eyes

6-10: Pretty Bad                    

11-15: Viewable                    

16-20: Excellent                    

                 

Footnote (to answer the questions that nobody cares about):

Q- Have you ever broke the law?

A- I once stole a bag of frozen peas from a local supermarket when I was a toddler, so I suppose you could say I'm a well rounded criminal.

Q- Why haven't you referred to wet socks in this review?

A- I just did.....................................↑