Seventh Son

Wow... it's been a while since I've seen a movie this bad.

December was my Netflix Purge month. It was filled with movies that I had put on my Netflix list because I had heard they were good movies and I wanted to experience them. Because of this, even the weakest film on that list (probably J Edgar if I'm being honest) still had some good acting, and some great ideas. Seventh Son is just a different level of bad. And the best part about it was just how many things it got wrong.

Seventh Son centers around the return of an evil witch who has been imprisoned for years prior. This witch is named Mother Malkin but you're just gonna call her Julianne Moore for this entire film so so am I.

And who do you call when evil witches are a foot? A wizard... warrior... jedi? called a Spook by the name of... well you're just gonna call him Jeff Bridges with marbles in his mouth so so will I.

Jeff Bridges takes Jon Snow... no seriously its Kit Harrington, his apprentice to try and kill Julianne Moore, but fails and Jon Snow ends up dying. So Jeff Bridges needs a new apprentice before he fights Julianne Moore so he finds off brand Jamie Lannister (played by Ben Barnes). I seriously had no idea what this guys name was so I just called him Off Brand Jamie Lannister the entire time.

Together the two must fight monsters and eventually get to fight Julianne Moore.

Along the way you've got your typical mentor and student relationship between these two. Jeff Bridges doesn't have much faith in Off Brand Jamie Lannister, Off Brand Jamie Lannister is finding himself while developing a half assed relationship with a hot half witch played by Alicia Vikander.

The problem is that it's boring!

Really, really boring!

I would say that Jeff Bridges is probably the only really developed character in this movie and his issue is that he sounds like he's got a mouth full of food... the entire movie! He also looks like he's bored the entire time and it also doesn't help that his character is really kind of the worst.

There's a decent point made in the movie that Jeff Bridges is too close minded and he's almost painted as a bad guy while the milk toast off brand Jamie Lannister doesn't totally trust him. That's not really addressed or resolved at all in this movie. Jeff Bridges is still an alcoholic by the end of the film and he's still a little bit of an asshole.

I will give them credit, he's also the only one in this movie that looks kind of cool and not like someone from 2016 thrown into a fantasy film.

That's the case with Ben Barnes and Alicia Vikander.

These two are probably your most milk toast and generic romantic leads. Nothing about these two was charming, had any sense of chemistry, or was interesting at all.

Ben Barnes seems to really only be in this role because they couldn't get Kit Harrington to play the main character and Alecia Vikander is probably thinking, "I'm glad Ex-Machina is coming out after this to make everyone forget about this awful choice of a film"

Nothing about these characters is interesting, not even the real live people that affect their lives that they lose. Yeah this is a spoiler but I don't care, both these characters lose their mothers from Julianne Moore and both of them really look like they could give less of a shit than I did when I was watching this film.

And speaking of Julianne Moore, it should be surprising that she won an Oscar for her work in Still Alice just a year before.

I am convinced that studios put something in actors contracts when they sign up for these Oscar award winning roles that if they win, they have to do a really shitty role right after. The same thing happened with Eddie Redmayne in Jupiter Ascending and he won for The Theory of Everything.

And the thing about Moore is that she's not a bad choice for a role like this.

Moore has shown that she's a very versatile actress and she's able to do a variety of roles. She can be the good guy but she can also be the bad guy and be very sinister. Right before this movie she did Hunger Games and I thought she was a very good choice for President Coin. And right before that she did Still Alice which again won her an Oscar. So it would have been an actually really interesting progression if she had gone from main role drama film, to grey character in Hunger Games to really good villain in a fantasy movie, but instead she just seemed to not give a shit like the rest of this cast and the rest of the film.

And here's the thing.

There's actually a lot in this movie that might have worked if someone had given a shit.

This movie is based off a book called The Spook's Apprentice. I have not read this book, but I assume like any fantasy book, it had its good moments and inspired someone to say, this could become a movie. And I can understand why. I don't know how much of the movie is taking from the source material but there are a lot of really cool imagery and creative ideas that come out of this movie. The problem comes when no suspense or any care is put into these ideas.

Some of the monsters and the creature designs are pretty creative and I think put in the hands of a competent director like a Guiermo Del Toro or Peter Jackson, this could have been an interesting adaptation of what seems like an at least creative idea.

Now the CGI is garbage but again, if someone had put some time and effort into this film, with the right story, it could have actually been a visually appealing movie.

On top of that, you have a pretty competent cast.

While I've shit on everyone from Moore to Bridges, the actors they got in this film are actually pretty good actors. Moore is an Academy Award winning actress, so is Bridges. Vikander is an up and comer. Ben Barnes... well they could have gotten Kit Harrington to play his role and he's a competent actor, especially in a fantasy setting.

This movie has the source material and the talent to make something that could have actually worked. But instead they just kind of throw it up on the canvas and expect it to all come together.

I just watched a really interesting video, critiquing the Lord of the Rings trilogy and analyzing why it worked. The reason it did was because there was talent involved. That talent had chemistry on and off the screen. There was phenomenal source material. That source material was adapted in a clever way that made you take it seriously. The talent took it seriously.

The funny thing about Seventh Son is that everybody seems to play this movie so straight and they play it so straight and boring that it's almost laughable.

It's hysterical even comparing these two movies because Seventh Son is nowhere near the caliber of film that Lord of the Rings was, but something that also might surprise you about this film is that it made back it's budget.

This film had a 95 million dollar budget and raked in 114 million. Now if I'm a business person, I see that as a supply and demand. It's obvious that people are interested in seeing a Fantasy movie with magic, sword fighting, and dragons, but the bar has been set so high that it doesn't seem like anything can really top Lord of the Rings.

Overall, Seventh Son had a lot of interesting concepts, visuals, and even a competent cast. All the pieces were there, it just seemed like nobody gave a crap in this movie to really make it anything more than just a poor attempt at cashing in on the audiences desire for good fantasy.

Everyone looks bored, Jeff Bridges needs to get the marbles out of his mouth, and if everyone, screenwriters, the director, the actors, and the visual effects designers, had just given 20% more of a shit for this film, it probably would have been a passable fantasy film. But instead what we got was a huge pile of dog crap that was really a horrible waste of time.

But those are my thoughts on Seventh Son. It's good to be reviewing complete garbage again. I can say with complete confidence that this is a shitty movie and you shouldn't be wasting your time. But what do you think? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @cmhaugen24 as well as send me your requests for films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

I'll leave you with this. I need something totally different than this garbage... here's some actual talent. Enjoy!