Review: Seventh Son

Not much happens in Seventh Son, though it certainly works hard to convince you otherwise. Based on the first book in Joseph Delaney's The Wardstone Chronicles series, this anaemic entry into the fantasy adventure genre barely delivers the needful and repels any attempt at narrative momentum.

Jeff Bridges stars as Gregory, the sole remaining "spook" belonging to an elite order of knights whose life's work is to battle the dark forces. His former lover, witch queen Mother Malkin (Julianne Moore), has escaped her imprisonment in time for the imminent arrival of the Blood Moon, a centennial event that offers a resurgence of her diminished powers. Their reunion ends with the shapeshifting sorceress evading his trap and leaving dead his trusted apprentice (Kit Harington).

Gregory enlists farmhand Tom Ward (Ben Barnes) as his next trainee. The seventh son of the seventh son, Tom is seized with visions of doom that involve the beguiling enchantress Alice (Alicia Vikander), Mother Malkin's niece who has been assigned to spy on Gregory. She warns Tom about Gregory, Gregory warns him about Alice.. Master and student go through the motions of his training. Ghouls and ghosts and other CGI monsters present themselves for vanquishing. Mother Malkin purrs about unleashing hell so that women are no longer victimised by men.

Seventh Son is all noise and hocus pocus and just plain hooey. This is a film where the tail very much wags the dog as every element of the film is secondary to the visual effects, which are nowhere near as impressive as they could have been. Director Sergei Bodrov (Prisoner of the Mountains) seems in a hurry to get things over and done with, a fool's errand at best since the film is stubbornly set to sluggish.

As everything is designed to foreshadow or spotlight another visual effect, almost every scene could be excised without any grievous injury to the overall narrative. One could argue that most films of this genre as well as superhero films are constructed to showcase the special effects. Yes, but they are also tethered to narratives that bothered to fully flesh themselves out and had proper points of view. Seventh Son stumbles from one set piece to another with very little purpose, and ends up a pastiche of better, more interesting films.

Derivation is the watchword as Seventh Son at least invokes a feeling of déjà vu when it's not stirring up storms of disinterest. The widescreen vistas recall Lord of the Rings, Moore's Mother Malkin is garbed in wardrobe pilfered from Angelina Jolie's Maleficent and Charlize Theron's Ravenna from Snow White and the Huntsman. Bridges recycles his Oscar-winning performance from True Grit with the added intention of being as unintelligible as possible. Barnes, having already played this type of role once too many times, is barely engaged.

Seventh Son

Directed by: Sergei Bodrov

Written by: Charles Leavitt, Steven Knight, Matt Greenberg; adapted from Joseph Delaney's The Spook's Apprentice

Starring: Jeff Bridges, Julianne Moore, Ben Barnes, Alicia Vikander, Djimon Hounsou, Antje Traue, Olivia Williams, Kit Harington