Children are likely to be thrilled, at least, by the special effects, which come courtesy of Star Wars veteran John Dykstra, and which supplement the usual computer generated eyesores with some pleasingly old-fashioned touches, including a many-limbed swordfighter who recalls Ray Harryhausen’s work on The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973). In Delaney’s novel, the hero is about 12 years old, and the film is likely to play best to that age group– although some gruesome fight sequences and a jarringly out of place f-word suggest it is also making a foolhardy play for a more cynical older teenage market. Perhaps such a thing would be unthinkable for a film that seems particularly nervous of women – with the central device of the “Blood Moon” unambiguously linking Mother Malkin’s diabolical plans to the menstrual cycle. Of the supporting cast, Olivia Williams fares best as Tom’s mother, her single scene with Moore hinting that, had the film focused its energies on a distaff witchcraft showdown, it could have had a pairing to rival Vincent Price and Boris Karloff in The Raven (1963).
Alicia Vikander’s half-witch love interest, meanwhile, is tied up in conflicting loyalties quite similar to those of Joanne Whalley’s turncoat princess in Willow (1988), with the exact nature of her magical powers seemingly subject to the whims of the plot. Early scenes of Tom working as a pig herder are evocative of Walt Disney’s ill-fated animated epic The Black Cauldron (1985), and Barnes remains scarcely more three-dimensional than the pen-and-ink hero of that film (this despite Seventh Son’s often murky 3-D presentation). Here, his most effective moments come early on, and he has no qualms about alerting the audience to the fact that he’s slumming – adopting an outright ludicrous vocal inflection that renders about half his lines unintelligible.īarnes is blandly appealing. She’s a spooky hoot, although sadly underserved by a desultory final showdown.įrom The Last Picture Show (1971) to Crazy Heart (2009), Bridges has tended to excel in roles that make the most of his preening quality, although he’s recently come unstuck with a run of sci-fi non-starters including R.I.P.D. Always an adventurous performer, Moore is seldom praised for her dead-on affinity for kitsch, but she puts it to good use here, leaning into the film’s absurdity rather than looking down upon it.
Chewing the scenery with gusto, she looks particularly fetching with a long, snake-like tail. With Sergey Bodrov’s direction remaining fairly anonymous throughout, Moore is the main attraction. It’s all hands on deck in the witch-hunting department, as the film’s cod-medieval setting (pulled together on handsome Canadian locations) is currently under threat from the nefarious Mother Malkin (Moore), a shape-shifting supervillain whose actual plans are never articulated, but presumably have something to do with the end of mankind. Loosely adapted from a children’s novel by Joseph Delaney, the ramshackle storyline involves a young man named Tom (Ben Barnes), who is apprenticed to veteran witch-hunter Master Gregory (Jeff Bridges). While nobody would confuse it for a classic, Seventh Son is fairly amusing, blessedly unpretentious matinee fare, closer in spirit to the sword-and-sorcery potboilers of the 1980s than to the solemn Lord of the Rings franchise. That speculation was unfounded, as – to a certain degree – was the criticism. run, during which some critics even speculated whether the film might harm the Oscar chances of its star, Julianne Moore.
Seventh Son arrives on our screens trailing bad press from its long-delayed U.S. Starring Jeff Bridges, Julianne Moore, Ben Barnes, Alicia Vikander, Olivia Williams
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