Fright Night Friday Movie Review: Season of the Witch

Hello everyone!

Hope you are all enjoying the Autumn weather! I sure am! I'm also very excited that tomorrow (Saturday) is October 1st!! Halloween is just around the corner! I need to get into gear and start decorating...shame on me for not starting sooner!

This week's movie review is brought to us by my friend, Roxy! This is the first time she's written a movie review and I'm so honored that she wrote it for us! She does warn that there are some spoilers in her review, so if you haven't seen this movie and don't want too many surprises be warned! :)

Season of the Witch (2011)
starring Nicholas Cage and Ron Perlman

First, I have to say, that the advertisements for this movie were misleading. I really thought I'd be watching a movie about a witch with some scary abilities. From the opening scene - the hanging and drowing of suspected witches - I had my suspicions of what this movie was really about. One confesses and pleads for her life, another explains that she was only using herbal medicine, the last tells the priest "you'll burn in hell". Oh, believe me I loved that part...it's what happened after the hanging that made me wonder who I was supposed to be rooting for.

Cut to a battlefield, where Nick Cage and Ron Perlman are participating in the crusades. Yes, it's all in the name of religion, we're all too familiar with that. I think Ron Perlman makes a good barbarian, by the way. They discover, just a bit late, that there's no honor in what they're doing and desert the army. Not long after, they find themselves caught in a town suffering from the plague. Naturally, the townspeople believe a witch to be the cause of the pestilence. The deserters are tasked with delivering the witch to a place where her powers may be nullified. They are joined by another soldier, a priest, an altar boy, and a liar they've recruited as a guide.

At this point in the movie, I am thinking the "witch" is an innocent victim. Then things start to happen. One by one, her escorts are killed off by events that she instigates. Her personality continually fluxates between innocent victim and something more sinister. While I was watching, I just kept saying, "That's not a witch. Whatever that is, it ain't a witch." The final scene, I have to call satisfying in that I can appreciate adventure/horror battle scenes in which the antagonist holds nothing back. This villain is such that the scene is nearly apocalyptic before it's done.

Good and Bad Points:
Speed of the plot - it doesn't lag, but in places I wished there was a little more detail and less speed.

Climax - the plot didn't build suspense in a way to create the "wow factor" but rather created confusion. I wonder if the writers wanted to keep the audience guessing or if the writers were guessing along the way.

Antagonist Motive and Ending - The antagonist's motive, while not known until nearly the end, left me with more questions than answers. The ending, while not bad, felt abrupt.

Special Effects: The demons were awesome, but the morphing used on the wolves faces made me think of something out of the Buffy series. They're wolves, not tv-cheese vampires.

Overall, I liked this movie. While I wasn't "wowed" by it, I would still add it to my collection. Since I liked this one, just short of the wow factor, I give it 4 out of 5 skulls.

Thanks for your great review, Roxy! I've been wanting to see this movie, I'm even more interested in seeing it now!

Remember, if you would like to submit a movie review we would love to feature it! Just email your review to the email address you can find on the contact button on the right hand side of the blog! Hope everyone has a wonderful first day of October!

Happy Hauntings!