Seventh Son
Directed by: Sergey Bodrov
Written by: Charles Leavitt and Steven Knight - Screen Story by Matt Greenbert - Based on the novel "The Spook's Apprentice" by Joseph Delaney
Starring: Jeff Bridges, Ben Barnes, Julianne Moore, Alicia Vikander, Antje Traue, Olivia Williams, John DeSantis, Kit Harington, Djimon Hounsou, Gerard Plunkett, Jason Scott Lee, Kandyse McClure, Luc Roderique, Zahf Paroo
Action/Adventure/Fantasy - 102 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 5 Feb 2015
Written by: Charles Leavitt and Steven Knight - Screen Story by Matt Greenbert - Based on the novel "The Spook's Apprentice" by Joseph Delaney
Starring: Jeff Bridges, Ben Barnes, Julianne Moore, Alicia Vikander, Antje Traue, Olivia Williams, John DeSantis, Kit Harington, Djimon Hounsou, Gerard Plunkett, Jason Scott Lee, Kandyse McClure, Luc Roderique, Zahf Paroo
Action/Adventure/Fantasy - 102 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 5 Feb 2015
Whatever happened to movies like Krull (1983), Legend (1985), and even Conan the Destroyer (1984)? Nowadays, a studio will release the occasional Eragon (2006) or Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013), but they are few and far between. There is an audience for these fantasy adventures, yet the audience is routinely underserved with low brow, mundane content. Seventh Son does not raise the bar very high, but I welcome its addition to an almost forgotten genre which routinely produced in the ‘70s and ‘80s sword and dragon films full of epic quests. If you want swords, witches, and dragons, Seventh Son will give you swords, witches, and dragons, but nothing more.
Seventh Son’s creators found a checklist, checked the boxes, and called it a day. When Master Gregory (Jeff Bridges, 2014’s The Giver) shows up at a secluded farm and asks to buy their seventh son of a seventh son, nobody is the least bit surprised. There is a quick goodbye between the boy, Tom Ward (Ben Barnes), and his mother (Olivia Williams, 2012’s Anna Kareninia) who treat the scene as more inevitable than with any emotion. Seventh sons of seventh sons are supposed to have seven times the strength of normal men and a bunch of other favorable attributes which are only very briefly mentioned. I can only assume if Tom Ward had his own seventh son, it would burst out of the mother’s womb on fire cutting his own umbilical cord.
Seventh Son’s creators found a checklist, checked the boxes, and called it a day. When Master Gregory (Jeff Bridges, 2014’s The Giver) shows up at a secluded farm and asks to buy their seventh son of a seventh son, nobody is the least bit surprised. There is a quick goodbye between the boy, Tom Ward (Ben Barnes), and his mother (Olivia Williams, 2012’s Anna Kareninia) who treat the scene as more inevitable than with any emotion. Seventh sons of seventh sons are supposed to have seven times the strength of normal men and a bunch of other favorable attributes which are only very briefly mentioned. I can only assume if Tom Ward had his own seventh son, it would burst out of the mother’s womb on fire cutting his own umbilical cord.
Master Gregory is known as a ‘spook’ and acts as an exorcist of sorts battling demons and ghouls. His arch-nemesis and queen of all things dark and evil, the witch Mother Malkin (Julianne Moore, 2014’s Still Alice), is back from exile, growing stronger because the moon is going through some special phase, and is gathering all the villains from across the land. The brief introduction of and then almost complete shunning of any inclusion at all of the bad guys comes off cartoonish. There is a guy with four arms who resembles a Hindu deity, a woman who turns into a leopard, a weird albino thing with a forked tongue, and Djimon Hounsou (2014's Guardians of the Galaxy) shows up as king of the assassins. This is simply a chance to show off costumes and make-up and include the requisite amount of oddball-looking creatures. When you’re in a land far, far away, you need oddball-looking creatures, even if you barely use them.
The story plods along punctuated by alternating scenes of fighting, instruction for our young pupil, and some romantic interludes as Tom forms a Romeo and Juliet relationship with a strange young woman, Alice (Alicia Vikander), whose intentions are purposefully muddled, yet we all know where it is leading. In a scene I’m not sure was set up as an homage, but more as a coincidence, we are introduced to Alice in a Monty Python and the Search for the Holy Grail “Burn the Witch” skit. The plot is so stock and formulaic; director Sergey Bodrov chooses to employ some lazy jump scares to move the audience around in their seats and advocates some serious overacting for Jeff Bridges and Julianne Moore. Since they are in a fantasy film, they elongate and draw out their syllables to make it sound more Middle Ageish I assume.
Based on the first book in Joseph Delany’s series, The Last Apprentice, Seventh Son sets itself up for a sequel and lays the foundation for a series, but I cannot imagine any studio execs see a franchise future. Seventh Son was filmed in 2012 and sat on the shelf through an abnormally long post-production period and then a brief studio squabble when Legendary split from Warner Bros. Hint – if the studio is no rush to release your film, pushes it back with delays and add-ons, you’re not looking at the next Hunger Games or Harry Potter series.
However, even though Seventh Son is as stale and predictable as can be, I appreciate the genre bump. There will always be room for the next epic fantasy. I’m not talking about Lord of the Rings scale, but an effective Conan the Barbarian adventure. Furthermore, for the Big Lebowski fanatics out there (of which there is a remarkable number), notice that Jeff Bridges and Julianne Moore once again share the screen. So at least there’s that.
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