Session of the Which

I'll say this about this movie. The makers definitely decided not to bother with "are witches real or not?" Yep, they are, and only the book artifact can be used to destroy them.

However, the movie tries to have its cake and eat it too in that we are presented with a young woman, accused of being a witch, and taken off to get a trial (and there are plenty of anecdotes of the accused ending up dead either way). Is she a witch? Is she just a young woman? But the movie already has its mind made up about the matter and the director only gives a token nod to the uncertainty premise.

This is a journey movie, and there are plenty of encounters along the way, and a big boss fight at the end and... yeah, no-one was really trying here, certainly not the script writer. This wouldn't even make an interesting D&D-style game. It's an action movie, not a thinker. Certainly no real character arc worth mentioning.

Nicholas Cage gives a decent performance for all that, and even Ron Perlman makes his character fractionally more than the one dimension creation it is. Robert Sheehan (Misfits) shows off his range, and look out for a heavily make-up'd Christopher Lee. In fact, that's the real star of the movie, the effects. In particular the CGI. It must be so considering how much CGI there is, and how obvious it is.

I'm not saying it's a bad movie. I'm saying it's not an innovative movie, and should be watched with that in mind.

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