‘Seventh Son’ Review: Witches and Dragons and Ghosts! Oh My!

Seventh Son is in theaters today, but for a film that’s full of witches and dragons, there’s really very little magic to this story.

The film follows Jeff Bridges’ Master Gregory, a Spook (think Hunters from Supernatural, but back in medieval days) who is on a constant search for the seventh son of the seventh son to take on as an apprentice and help him battle creatures of the dark. Julianne Moore also stars as the witch queen and former lover of Gregory, Mother Malkin. I’m willing to bet she only signed on because of the ultra-cool costumes, because it couldn’t have been for the story. I had the chance to watch the film in all its IMAX 3-D glory and even that only mildly helped the situation.

First of all, let me address my biggest issue with this film. I, like many other women around the world, am a HUGE Kit Harington fan. One of the reasons I wanted to see this movie was so that I could look at his pretty, pretty face for a couple of hours.

(SPOILER ALERT!)

Well that didn’t happen. Why? Kit Harington DIES within the first 10 minutes of the film. I felt bamboozled. It’s almost like the movie executives knew what a mediocre film they had on their hands and decided to use him as an audience draw, but we all know executives wouldn’t do that. That’d just be wrong!

Now on to the acting… Jeff Bridges played senior Jeff Bridges, which was fine I guess, but for some unknown reason the man sounded like he had a golf ball in his mouth throughout the entire film. It was SO hard understanding what he was saying, which had to make him a terrible teacher, but I guess everyone in that world makes understands garbled speech perfectly. Ben Barnes, the young man that played the titular seventh son, was handsome, but forgettable. No seriously, I saw him in The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (as Prince Caspian) and the remake of Dorian Gray (as Dorian Gray) and I forgot that was him. He’s been the title character in multiple films and I’ve forgotten him in all of them… see the problem here?

Julianne Moore did the best with what she was given. Now I don’t know how you go from President Coin to this, but it happened. Her character was the main villain of the film and as someone who loves to hear backstories about my villains – being turned from good to evil just because of jealousy and hatred really doesn’t make the cut. I didn’t understand her motivation for anything in the movie, and the brief attempt in explaining it just made me roll my eyes.

Speaking of eye-rolling moments, there was the inevitable love story. The seventh son, Tom Ward, fell immediately in love with a half-witch, played by the lovely Alicia Vikander, and aside from the issues I have with those tired love-at-first-sight storylines, there was no real chemistry between the two of them. I guess when you look at how the film ends, however, Tom probably came to the same conclusion.

The things I did enjoy about the film were the beautiful costumes and interesting special effects. Since all of the villains could transform from human to animal forms, it was a cool touch to have costuming details reflect which animal they turned into. Julianne Moore could shape-shift into a dragon and her human costume had a steel-like dragon’s spine going down the back, while other characters all had their unique costumes to match their inner beasts as well and all equally badass.

The transformations themselves were also interesting to watch, and there were some pretty unique-looking creatures as well. During the film Master Gregory and Tom traveled with a creature named Tusk who honestly became the most interesting person… thing… in the movie to me, and I’m fairly sure that wasn’t supposed to be the case.

Overall, I can’t say that I enjoyed the film, but on the plus side it was beautiful to watch in 3-D and the costuming was fantastic. The story was predictable though, and if you’re looking for something to hold you over until Game of Thrones returns, this isn’t that.

Grade: D

‘Seventh Son’ Trailer

Seventh Son stars Jeff Bridges, Julianne Moore, Ben Barnes, Alicia Vikander, Kit Harington, Olivia Williams, Antje Traue and Djimon Hounsou. If you REALLY want to, you can catch it in theaters now.

Photo Credit: Universal Pictures