'Seventh Son' - Movie review

'Seventh Son'
Starring: Jeff Bridges, Ben Barnes
Director: Sergei Bodrov
Ratings:

When the trailer of ‘Seventh Son' came out two years ago it looked terrible. Lionsgate, the studio behind the film decided to push the movie back by a few months to rectify some of the horrible elements in it. But the months turned into a year, and then almost another whole year. The new trailers showed up with added footage, but there seemed to be little difference in the quality of the movie. The visuals only looked better, they didn't seem to improve the content of the movie.

Sadly ‘Seventh Son' is exactly as disappointing and underwhelming as the trailers. There are otherworldly beasts, huge action set pieces, gorgeous looking CGI evil forces, sweeping camera angles, and yet the film doesn't create an iota of interest in you throughout its runtime. Generally in films like these the element that drags a movie down is the acting, but even that front is covered by the cast of Jeff Bridges, Julianne Moore and Ben Barnes who are all very good actors.

The thing with ‘Seventh Son' is, it's based on a Joseph Delaney's ‘The Wardstone Chronicles' titled ‘The Spook's Apprentice' - and the source material is a graphic novel struggling to be a non-graphic one. The sensibilities of the source material appeal to teens and even younger ones, and it works in more than one ways. It's no Harry Potter for sure, but it has its following. However the film based on the book struggles even more to separate itself from the vast gamut of young adult stuff floating around since the past few years. What it actually does is remind you how the other YA films were actually better than this one.

The film is directed by Sergei Bodrov, who earlier made the fantastic ‘Mongol' back in 2007. This is his first Hollywood movie and it seems like he had the same problems that Tommy Wirkola had while making that disappointing Hansel and Gretel movie. Much like that movie, ‘Seventh Son' is a mess of haphazard storytelling, unlikable characters, awful lines, an uninspired villain, clichéd dark themes and unintentionally funny attempts at seriousness. It's probably just another case of a studio cherry picking an international indie director to render a generic money spinner with an indie flavor, and it just falls flat at everything it does. If you're looking for a good swords and sandals epic with mystical creatures, you'll have to look elsewhere because this one is a turkey.