Over the past two weeks, we’ve taken a glance at some really good movies out in theaters.
Season of the Witch is not one of them. It’s sort of required these days when discussing Nicolas Cage to make some mention of his ever-evolving hairstyles and personal quirks — the castle and the tax problems — but there are much more immediate issues at hand regarding Cage in the film. Like, pretty much, the film itself.
This is not a good movie. Nicholas Cage and Ron Perlman play a couple of crusading knights from back in the 14th century who finally get tired of hacking away their enemies and go AWOL. Eventually they are captured and can avoid hanging if they take the “Black Witch” to trial. The Black Witch is played by (of course) a beautiful woman but inside is Satan himself. Perlman wise cracks throughout the entire movie and Cage never cracks a smile. Maybe that’s because he knows in real life the IRS is breathing down his back much like they did Wesley Snipes near moments before convicting him of tax evasion.
Directed by the perennially hollow Dominic Sena from a script by Bragi Schut, Season of the Witch is all seams. It never balances out its competing desires to be a rollicking medieval adventure, a thoughtful meditation on faith and even a buddy road movie.
What’s most disappointing, though, is how Cage seems to be sleepwalking through so much of it. He and Perlman are such odd, idiosyncratic actors that they give any scene of the two of them just talking a freewheeling, offhanded energy, like outtakes from an unseen Hope and Crosby picture. But there are only occasional glimmers of Cage’s singularly eccentric line-readings or moments when he turns conventional reaction shots on their head. Mostly they crop up just enough to serve as a reminder of their absence.
A kitschy, camp quality might have helped. Instead, Season of the Witch waffles and then withers. Gods and monsters just shouldn’t be this stuffy and stilted — and to make matters worse, the anticlimactic ending is a mangled mishmash of theology and fake theatrics. Calling up the fires of Hell should really be more fun. Some might say that this is not the worst film in Cage’s recent rash of paycheck opportunities. They’re wrong.