2011 saw the somewhat under the radar release of Season of the Witch starring Nicolas Cage and Ron Perlman.
Crusade Knights Behmen (Cage) and Felson (Perlman) becoming disillusioned with the ongoing holy war ravaging the middle east desert their posts and begin their long trek to their homeland through plague ravaged Europe. Along the way they are discovered and under threat of death for their desertion, agree to transport a witch to a far off abbey to be tried for her involvement in the plague infecting the lands. Believing the plague to be an evil curse the duo are accompanied on their quest by the priest Debelzaq (Stephen Campbell Moore), a wanna be knight in Kay (Robert Sheehan), Eckhart (Ulrich Thomsen) a Knight who lost his family to the plague and Hagamar (Stephen Graham) a superstitious grifter.
The road ahead will be an arduous one with plenty of cliche obstacles along the way each leading you into the belief that the “witch” may be more than you would believe.
Season of the Witch suffers by trying to be too many things at once. It struggles with themes of religion as it tries to paint the church as both the cause of and only refuge against evil. The young and beautiful witch / girl portrayed by Claire Foy doesn’t even warrant a name, highlighting the church’s stance on women in the middle ages, yet as the movie progresses we see the nature and motives of the evil harboring within as it begins to unravel the group.
The convoluted story isn’t exactly helped with both Cage and Perlman giving middling performances and a supporting cast that while exceptionally talented have only been given very one dimensional flash in the pan character to portray lending you to forget them rather quickly.
The standout moments for Season of the Witch are in the beautiful and haunting scenery from locations in Austria and Hungary where it was shot on location and some stellar work done by the production team on the plague victims reminding you what an atrocious time it was in human history. CG is surprisingly good and still holds up today with the final chapter exploding into a surprisingly fast paced wrap up that I was expecting from the rest of the film.
Season of the Witch is by no means a bad movie and I am surprised it hasn’t found more love on streaming services. It became a bit of a go to for me in the years after its release when I wanted to turn my brain off and have something that had that creepy tone playing in the background.
