Momo Reviews: Season of the Witch
For the past few months my attentions have been occupied by some, uh, kind of major life stuff. Thankfully I've been able to find some time to relax and take my mind off all the stress by doing things like watching movies. As it's so limited, you'd think I might want to exercise a little more quality control over my precious entertainment time. Well, you'd be absolutely right, and that's why I chose to watch Season of the Witch.
This poster is exactly 75 times more exciting than the actual movie.
Ha ha, no, I fooled you! I didn't watch it because I want to spend my precious free time on quality entertainment! I watched because I HATE MYSELF.
To ameliorate the pain a little, not because I don't completely hate myself but because I am a wimp, I live-tweeted it, which meant I could spend at least part of the movie looking somewhere other than at the movie, and also means like half my writing's done! GOOD THINKING, MOMO. Yes, Momo, I know, it was good thinking. YOU'RE SO SMART, MOMO. The smartest. AND ATTRACTIVE. That, too.
Season of the Witch is about some dudes and a grubby young lady and-- let me just put this out there straight off-- ZERO WITCHES, and really not much else. And also Donovan is not mentioned anywhere, so I feel like there were several great opportunities this film completely passed over.
If they had called it "The Fat Angel", it would have made just as much sense and I probably would have liked it more, just sayin'.
I don't know, there's like some priest dude and some ladies that are "witches" and they hang the ladies and drop them in the river but the priest is like AW NAW I GOTS TO DO THE BLESSING THING but the executioner is like TOUGH NOOGIES BRO so the priest hauls them all out and there's this dead old lady and she spits blood on him and gets all shaky but then he does the blessing and then she stops and then he goes to drop them all back in the river but he gets pulled in and one of the ladies, I can't even tell which lady it was, that is how bad the CGI is, she goes all DEMON FACE and burns him up or some junk.
And then it's the Crusades, in the least convincing desert ever
and Nicolas Cage and Ron Perlman are the least convincing Crusaders ever
but they really like Crusadin' (note to self: remake this as buddy movie called "Crusadin' Together") UNTIIIILLLL
Seriously. Seriously, they crusade for years and years and in all that time, somehow, never realized that innocent women and children might get killed, and they are too noble for all that shit, so they desert and go back to Europe. Except
Neither Cage nor Perlman, thank you God, bothers to attempt a foreign accent. I know British is like the default accent of foreignness as far as Americans are concerned, but I was laughing because they didn't even go for that. Everyone kind of sounds like they're in a high school production of The Crucible. There's one guy I swear had a Queens accent.
Sure, I know where the monastery's at, it's on Thirty-Third and Eighth, right next to Ray's Original.
But then I looked it up on IMDB, because I am serious about my research, guys, and it turns out EVERYONE IN THE MOVIE EXCEPT CAGE AND PERLMAN ARE LEGIT ENGLISH PEOPLE. They were actually toning down their accents to sound more American. Can you even with this? Because I can't even with this.
So anyway, the Least Convincing Crusaders Ever (hereafter referred to as the LCCE) return to somewhere in Europe, I guess, I don't know if we ever find out what country or countries it's supposed to take place in, but I guess it seems vaguely Austro-Hungarian Empire-ish. Everything seems abandoned. They find a cottage in the middle of nowhere, and the people in it are all plague-dead, except the lady isn't really dead-- BOO MOMENT!-- so they off-screen mercy-kill her and burn the place. And then they get to this town, and Nicolas Cage has disguised himself with a scarf like he's Princess Jasmine when she sneaks out and pretends to be a normal person.
Fun fact: Nicolas Cage also assumes this "normal person" disguise when he does his grocery shopping.
The town is full of the plague, which is obviously due to WITCHCRAFT, and not at all due to God being angry about murdering innocent women or atrocious hygiene or anything. Plague notwithstanding, it's all going swell until Cage tells some 7-year-old to deal with his I'm A Crusader Y'all sword, the kid fumbles the solid steel weapon that is approximately 1.5 times as tall as he is, and-- GASP-- suddenly everyone realizes they're deserters, because everyone in Europe in 1352 or whatever was on the lookout for these two guys who quit the Crusades, sure, why not.
"Gee, I hope no one in this isolated community we've never been to recognizes us as those two guys who quit the Crusades. That would be terrible for everyone."
So then the LCCE are introduced to a carefully tousled young lady who has apparently admitted to causing the plague, on account of WITCHCRAFT, and told they can either haul her Cage of Holding to a monastery somewhere or they can get killed. This is sort of explained by Christopher Lee-- whom is, may I remind you, a Tolkien scholar, RAF operative, son of a Contessa, BAFTA Fellowship honoree, descendant of Charlemagne, bears an ancestral coat of arms awarded by the Holy Roman Emperor, Knight Bachelor, fuckin' Dracula-- in a cameo as a bishop, I guess, who's dying of the plague.
DESCENDED FROM CHARLEMAGNE, YOU GUYS.
Unfortunately for us all, they choose to haul the cage.
They take along a priest, some guy who's probably like a warrior or a guard or something and his wife and kids were killed by the plague, and Carmanooch over there because I guess he knew how to go places they probably need to go. And then they meet up with Adolescent Moustache, who turns out to be that kid who's on Misfits so I know him from all the people on my Tumblr dash who care about Misfits. I think he wants to prove his worthiness as a knight by taking this witch lady to her doom and junk. Oh, back in the days when worthiness was proven by your willingness to light underprivileged ladies on fire! THE ROMANCE OF IT ALL.
"Hold up, okay, we gotta clean up all the testosterone leaking on account of the MANLINESS."
Pretty much immediately, because these six dudes are all incapable of containing a teenage girl in an iron cage, Scruffy McWitch manages to escape, and while they're all searching for her, she enchants Warrior Dude to think he sees his dead daughter, but it's actually Adolescent Moustache, who mistakenly impales Warrior Dude on his sword and then feels pretty guilty about it. OOPS.
Alternate titles considered #1: While My Adolescent Moustache Gently Weeps
And then they re-catch the witch and she's all OOH PLEASE DON'T LET THE NASTY PRIEST TOUCH ME AGAIN I AM BUT AN INNOCENT YOUNG GIRL.
Who is totally not going to stab you in the hand with your own crucifix or anything, I promise.
The next thing I remember happening is this rickety ol' bridge they need to cross. This is like 40% of the plot's conflict: a bridge in serious disrepair.
"You think this is bad? Try getting over the Verazzano at 5:15 on a Friday."
There's a lot of drama around getting over this stupid bridge, and of course there's a near-miss as the bridge crumbles to bits the second everyone's safely across, and then Nicolas Cage goes
Seriously, it's some woods identical to the woods you just came out of, who cares. Then Magicky McDirtface howls and, I shit you not, a pack of demon wolves comes and attacks them. Carmanooch winds up getting eaten, but everyone else makes it out pretty much okay except for some bites and scratches, whatever, I guess demon wolf bites and scratches don't turn you into a demon werewolf because that would just make this movie silly.
Alternate titles considered #2: Hungry Like the Wolf Made Ridiculous by Amateurish CGI
And I guess after that they finally get to the monastery, except all the monks have died of plague, oh dear, whatever shall we do, I DO NOT CARE.
Luckily, I guess, they find the book they needed to un-witch the witch, so the priest starts reading, and then Grubby McHecate... turns into some terrible CGI and flies away.
Alternate titles considered #3: Sympathy for the Hilariously Inept Devil
Guys, I seriously wish I was making this up. The demon flies away, and they go back into the monastery, no one even cares why anymore, and the be-plagued monks start turning into zombies, climbing across the ceiling, and attacking our intrepid... dudes. I can't even call them heroes because I've spent the last 70 minutes wishing the characters would get around to dying faster.
The only one who actually made good on that was Warrior Dude way back in the first half, so he's the real hero of this film.
REAL AMERICAN DANISH HERO.
Anyhoodle, the demon twists the priest's head backwards, then hugs Ron Perlman to death with fire (I don't know how that managed to not be at least kind of cool), and then stabs Nicolas Cage a bunch of times with his wing-knives (okay, I kind of thought that was cool). Adolescent Moustache, meanwhile, has grabbed the holy book of un-witchening and continued reading where the priest left off when his spinal cord was snapped. The demon explains something irrelevant about how he's been trying to find all the copies of this book and destroy them so he can become all-powerful, and thus their entire journey to this monastery has been his plan all along, DIABOLICAL LAUGHTER. It's too late, though, because Adolescent Moustache finishes the holy incantation, I guess-- I'll be honest, I pretty much had tuned out at that point and was wondering whether there were any new kitten gifs on Tumblr. So the demon gets destroyed, and Crappy McUseless is left, nude and bewildered and no longer possessed.
Her "what the fuck just happened" expression serves as a handy proxy for everyone involved in this film in any way, especially the audience.
Then Dishevelled McHowDidTheyFindWomen'sClothesForHerInAMonastery and Adolescent Moustache bury whatever remained of the other guys and thank them for their noble sacrifice, but especially Nicolas Cage, because he was the main guy of the film despite doing absolutely nothing of any use whatsoever for 90 minutes and then taking a moment to leer at a naked girl before expiring, I am not shitting you, dear readers. I do not have a screen cap of this. Please trust me on it. You do not need to watch the movie to see for yourself.
A voiceover from Sabrina the Teenage Letdown explains that she has pledged to carry on and share their story with the world, so that others may know of the noble sacrifices of Nicolas Cage and his terrible weave, as she is the only one who knows the truth. The fact that she is the one person who had absolutely no idea what was going on the entire time since she was possessed by a demon is conveniently brushed aside, and then the movie is over, as are 95 minutes I could have spent doing absolutely anything else.
"The world must know the truth: that actually wasn't a weave. Nic Cage's hair is legitimately that awful."
Seriously, friends, if you're going to spend that amount of time on Season of the Witch, watch the George A. Romero film of the same name, which even he admits is terrible, but I guarantee you is less terrible than this even though I have never seen it. Or look up Agent Provacateur's promos for their Season of the Witch collection. I'm sure you can think of a way to entertain yourself doing that. Or just listen to the Donovan song 19 times in a row. By the end you will be wishing for a swift and merciful death an estimated 75% less than if you watch the film.
This poster is exactly 75 times more exciting than the actual movie.
Ha ha, no, I fooled you! I didn't watch it because I want to spend my precious free time on quality entertainment! I watched because I HATE MYSELF.
To ameliorate the pain a little, not because I don't completely hate myself but because I am a wimp, I live-tweeted it, which meant I could spend at least part of the movie looking somewhere other than at the movie, and also means like half my writing's done! GOOD THINKING, MOMO. Yes, Momo, I know, it was good thinking. YOU'RE SO SMART, MOMO. The smartest. AND ATTRACTIVE. That, too.
Season of the Witch is about some dudes and a grubby young lady and-- let me just put this out there straight off-- ZERO WITCHES, and really not much else. And also Donovan is not mentioned anywhere, so I feel like there were several great opportunities this film completely passed over.
If they had called it "The Fat Angel", it would have made just as much sense and I probably would have liked it more, just sayin'.
I don't know, there's like some priest dude and some ladies that are "witches" and they hang the ladies and drop them in the river but the priest is like AW NAW I GOTS TO DO THE BLESSING THING but the executioner is like TOUGH NOOGIES BRO so the priest hauls them all out and there's this dead old lady and she spits blood on him and gets all shaky but then he does the blessing and then she stops and then he goes to drop them all back in the river but he gets pulled in and one of the ladies, I can't even tell which lady it was, that is how bad the CGI is, she goes all DEMON FACE and burns him up or some junk.
And then it's the Crusades, in the least convincing desert ever
and Nicolas Cage and Ron Perlman are the least convincing Crusaders ever
but they really like Crusadin' (note to self: remake this as buddy movie called "Crusadin' Together") UNTIIIILLLL
Seriously. Seriously, they crusade for years and years and in all that time, somehow, never realized that innocent women and children might get killed, and they are too noble for all that shit, so they desert and go back to Europe. Except
Neither Cage nor Perlman, thank you God, bothers to attempt a foreign accent. I know British is like the default accent of foreignness as far as Americans are concerned, but I was laughing because they didn't even go for that. Everyone kind of sounds like they're in a high school production of The Crucible. There's one guy I swear had a Queens accent.
Sure, I know where the monastery's at, it's on Thirty-Third and Eighth, right next to Ray's Original.
But then I looked it up on IMDB, because I am serious about my research, guys, and it turns out EVERYONE IN THE MOVIE EXCEPT CAGE AND PERLMAN ARE LEGIT ENGLISH PEOPLE. They were actually toning down their accents to sound more American. Can you even with this? Because I can't even with this.
So anyway, the Least Convincing Crusaders Ever (hereafter referred to as the LCCE) return to somewhere in Europe, I guess, I don't know if we ever find out what country or countries it's supposed to take place in, but I guess it seems vaguely Austro-Hungarian Empire-ish. Everything seems abandoned. They find a cottage in the middle of nowhere, and the people in it are all plague-dead, except the lady isn't really dead-- BOO MOMENT!-- so they off-screen mercy-kill her and burn the place. And then they get to this town, and Nicolas Cage has disguised himself with a scarf like he's Princess Jasmine when she sneaks out and pretends to be a normal person.
Fun fact: Nicolas Cage also assumes this "normal person" disguise when he does his grocery shopping.
The town is full of the plague, which is obviously due to WITCHCRAFT, and not at all due to God being angry about murdering innocent women or atrocious hygiene or anything. Plague notwithstanding, it's all going swell until Cage tells some 7-year-old to deal with his I'm A Crusader Y'all sword, the kid fumbles the solid steel weapon that is approximately 1.5 times as tall as he is, and-- GASP-- suddenly everyone realizes they're deserters, because everyone in Europe in 1352 or whatever was on the lookout for these two guys who quit the Crusades, sure, why not.
"Gee, I hope no one in this isolated community we've never been to recognizes us as those two guys who quit the Crusades. That would be terrible for everyone."
So then the LCCE are introduced to a carefully tousled young lady who has apparently admitted to causing the plague, on account of WITCHCRAFT, and told they can either haul her Cage of Holding to a monastery somewhere or they can get killed. This is sort of explained by Christopher Lee-- whom is, may I remind you, a Tolkien scholar, RAF operative, son of a Contessa, BAFTA Fellowship honoree, descendant of Charlemagne, bears an ancestral coat of arms awarded by the Holy Roman Emperor, Knight Bachelor, fuckin' Dracula-- in a cameo as a bishop, I guess, who's dying of the plague.
DESCENDED FROM CHARLEMAGNE, YOU GUYS.
Unfortunately for us all, they choose to haul the cage.
They take along a priest, some guy who's probably like a warrior or a guard or something and his wife and kids were killed by the plague, and Carmanooch over there because I guess he knew how to go places they probably need to go. And then they meet up with Adolescent Moustache, who turns out to be that kid who's on Misfits so I know him from all the people on my Tumblr dash who care about Misfits. I think he wants to prove his worthiness as a knight by taking this witch lady to her doom and junk. Oh, back in the days when worthiness was proven by your willingness to light underprivileged ladies on fire! THE ROMANCE OF IT ALL.
"Hold up, okay, we gotta clean up all the testosterone leaking on account of the MANLINESS."
Pretty much immediately, because these six dudes are all incapable of containing a teenage girl in an iron cage, Scruffy McWitch manages to escape, and while they're all searching for her, she enchants Warrior Dude to think he sees his dead daughter, but it's actually Adolescent Moustache, who mistakenly impales Warrior Dude on his sword and then feels pretty guilty about it. OOPS.
Alternate titles considered #1: While My Adolescent Moustache Gently Weeps
And then they re-catch the witch and she's all OOH PLEASE DON'T LET THE NASTY PRIEST TOUCH ME AGAIN I AM BUT AN INNOCENT YOUNG GIRL.
Who is totally not going to stab you in the hand with your own crucifix or anything, I promise.
The next thing I remember happening is this rickety ol' bridge they need to cross. This is like 40% of the plot's conflict: a bridge in serious disrepair.
"You think this is bad? Try getting over the Verazzano at 5:15 on a Friday."
There's a lot of drama around getting over this stupid bridge, and of course there's a near-miss as the bridge crumbles to bits the second everyone's safely across, and then Nicolas Cage goes
Seriously, it's some woods identical to the woods you just came out of, who cares. Then Magicky McDirtface howls and, I shit you not, a pack of demon wolves comes and attacks them. Carmanooch winds up getting eaten, but everyone else makes it out pretty much okay except for some bites and scratches, whatever, I guess demon wolf bites and scratches don't turn you into a demon werewolf because that would just make this movie silly.
Alternate titles considered #2: Hungry Like the Wolf Made Ridiculous by Amateurish CGI
And I guess after that they finally get to the monastery, except all the monks have died of plague, oh dear, whatever shall we do, I DO NOT CARE.
Luckily, I guess, they find the book they needed to un-witch the witch, so the priest starts reading, and then Grubby McHecate... turns into some terrible CGI and flies away.
Alternate titles considered #3: Sympathy for the Hilariously Inept Devil
Guys, I seriously wish I was making this up. The demon flies away, and they go back into the monastery, no one even cares why anymore, and the be-plagued monks start turning into zombies, climbing across the ceiling, and attacking our intrepid... dudes. I can't even call them heroes because I've spent the last 70 minutes wishing the characters would get around to dying faster.
The only one who actually made good on that was Warrior Dude way back in the first half, so he's the real hero of this film.
REAL AMERICAN DANISH HERO.
Anyhoodle, the demon twists the priest's head backwards, then hugs Ron Perlman to death with fire (I don't know how that managed to not be at least kind of cool), and then stabs Nicolas Cage a bunch of times with his wing-knives (okay, I kind of thought that was cool). Adolescent Moustache, meanwhile, has grabbed the holy book of un-witchening and continued reading where the priest left off when his spinal cord was snapped. The demon explains something irrelevant about how he's been trying to find all the copies of this book and destroy them so he can become all-powerful, and thus their entire journey to this monastery has been his plan all along, DIABOLICAL LAUGHTER. It's too late, though, because Adolescent Moustache finishes the holy incantation, I guess-- I'll be honest, I pretty much had tuned out at that point and was wondering whether there were any new kitten gifs on Tumblr. So the demon gets destroyed, and Crappy McUseless is left, nude and bewildered and no longer possessed.
Her "what the fuck just happened" expression serves as a handy proxy for everyone involved in this film in any way, especially the audience.
Then Dishevelled McHowDidTheyFindWomen'sClothesForHerInAMonastery and Adolescent Moustache bury whatever remained of the other guys and thank them for their noble sacrifice, but especially Nicolas Cage, because he was the main guy of the film despite doing absolutely nothing of any use whatsoever for 90 minutes and then taking a moment to leer at a naked girl before expiring, I am not shitting you, dear readers. I do not have a screen cap of this. Please trust me on it. You do not need to watch the movie to see for yourself.
A voiceover from Sabrina the Teenage Letdown explains that she has pledged to carry on and share their story with the world, so that others may know of the noble sacrifices of Nicolas Cage and his terrible weave, as she is the only one who knows the truth. The fact that she is the one person who had absolutely no idea what was going on the entire time since she was possessed by a demon is conveniently brushed aside, and then the movie is over, as are 95 minutes I could have spent doing absolutely anything else.
"The world must know the truth: that actually wasn't a weave. Nic Cage's hair is legitimately that awful."
Seriously, friends, if you're going to spend that amount of time on Season of the Witch, watch the George A. Romero film of the same name, which even he admits is terrible, but I guarantee you is less terrible than this even though I have never seen it. Or look up Agent Provacateur's promos for their Season of the Witch collection. I'm sure you can think of a way to entertain yourself doing that. Or just listen to the Donovan song 19 times in a row. By the end you will be wishing for a swift and merciful death an estimated 75% less than if you watch the film.