They’re particularly useful during the once-a-century Blood Moon – a menstruating solar eclipse which, for reasons unknown to me, gives all the world’s beasties some kind of increased power. Here, he’s shunted aside in favour of Ben Barnes, a black-hole charisma-trap of an actor who, for the record, looks every single day of his 33 years – odd, considering that this is yet another movie based on a series of young-adult novels, and the hero in those is 12 (which is, incidentally, the sole age at which Seventh Son both starts and stops being appealing).īarnes plays Tom Ward, the seventh son of a seventh son, who, thanks to his mathematically-convenient lineage, is roped into being the new apprentice of Master Gregory (Jeff Bridges) – a “Spook”, which as far as I can tell is the nickname for an ancient order of demon/dragon/witch hunters who’ve been pretty much wiped out over the years. Harington built his career while Seventh Son was sat on a shelf somewhere. You’d assume, if Seventh Son was a better or at least smarter movie, that this is some kind of subversive cinematic rug-pulling, rather than simply the casting of a (at the time) nobody actor in a nothing role. It’s evident early, when Kit Harington (Jon Snow in HBO’s Game of Thrones) is summarily immolated in the first ten minutes. That transition took a while, too, a lot longer than a movie of this quality deserves. But there’s no life in these visuals, no heart beating beneath the gloss they’re artlessly structured, frequently stupid, and strung haphazardly together along a ninety-minute scenic tour of mediocrity. The art department probably got a few collective slaps on the back, and someone evidently threw a lot of money at Seventh Son to facilitate the transition from paper to screen. There’s a different orc-ish dude with tusks who fights using wrestling manoeuvres, a witch who turns into a bear, another who turns into a leopard, and even a four-armed Shiva-style swordsman. You need to really commit to awfulness in order to undermine something as inherently cool as two dragons fighting to the death, say, or the hero riding a troll over the edge of a waterfall. It’s actually kind of amazing that a movie so full of individually awesome moments can be as insultingly, unforgivably terrible as Seventh Son.
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