Seventh Son **½ (2014, Ben Barnes, Julianne Moore, Jeff Bridges) – Movie Review

Ben Barnes heads the cast as young Tom Ward, who is apprenticed to the local Spook, old but still fighting fit Master Gregory (Jeff Bridges), to learn to fight evil spirits. Old Greg has sought him out as The One, as he’s the seventh son of a seventh son, and therefore, like him, special. Greg buys Tom from his mum, Mam Ward (Olivia Williams), who’s well upset to see him leaving home. This sets Tommy off on the path to becoming a Spook, a slayer of the evil creatures that haunt the land.

Julianne Moore also stars as the powerful evil witch Mother Malkin, who has killed Tom’s predecessor Mr Bradley (Kit Harington) in the yarn’s prologue. Now Mrs Malkin escapes her confinement to claim the world as her own while the grizzled, alcohol-addled Spook is away, giving apprentice Tom his first great challenge. Gregory returns to train Tom, but he better be quick, what with only a week to go before the blood moon rises.

Then there’s Alicia Vikander as the mysterious Alice, who’s apparently on the evil side, but fancies Tom and vice versa, so may not be, and Djimon Hounsou as Radu, Jason Scott Lee as Urag and Antje Traue as Bony Lizzie. I think they’re all on the evil side, too. So you see, it’s well set up with a good cast of characters, and good actors to play them.

But this was a troubled production when its visual effects house went bankrupt and its studio, Legendary Pictures, parted ways with distributor Warner Bros. It’s finally arrived in cinemas two years late, and sadly to a lukewarm response, taking only $17million in America.

If this was a critically bashed box office flop in the US, you can see why. It looks good and stylish, and was expensive at $95million, with the budget up there on screen, but as story telling it’s predictable, plodding and lethargic. However, it is saved by some good action sequences and its fun, campy sense of humour. Fans of old-style fantasy films, with lots of CGI monster effects are reasonably well taken care of.

Much might be expected with a couple of Oscar-winners at the head of the cast. But, though Master Gregory has some similarities to Jeff Bridges’s role in True Grit, he is so much worse in this, giving a really hammy performance that seems like a spoof of Ian McKellen’s Gandalf. Alas, Bridges has now done three fantasy films in a row after R.I.P.D. (2013) and The Giver (2014) that haven’t really hit the spot.

Moore camps it up effectively enough as the villainess, even if the role is beneath the new Oscar-winner. Moore gives it some punch – she makes Malkin plenty mad and malevolent. Ben Barnes, inheriting the role after Alex Pettyfer bowed out from the project, is appealing as Tom, eager and willing to please when the movie lets him. Performance-wise, Barnes and Moore rescue the movie.

But everyone else seems a bit lost. Vikander, inheriting the role after Jennifer Lawrence dropped out, is just left to moon around looking pained and awkward, and no one else has much to do, least of all Harington, whose early demise is particularly frustrating and disappointing.

Based on one of the young adult books in English writer Joseph Delaney’s The Wardstone Chronicles series, The Spook’s Apprentice. The books are sold in England as The Spook’s Apprentice series. But the movie’s not going to do much for book sales.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Movie Review

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