You’d think Julianne Moore leading a coven of witches who can transform into dragons, bears and Djimon Hounsou would be more entertaining. Moore seems to be having a good time with Seventh Son, but on the sly, as if director Sergei Bodrov is behind the camera like a schoolmaster warning her to stop flailing her arms around and “take this seriously”. It’s not a smart way to play this material.
Seventh Son is a exercise in sword and sorcery cliché based on the first of 14 YA books in Joseph Delaney’s Wardstone Chronicles series. I doubt we’ll see follow-ups put to film, as Seventh Son has been sitting on a shelf for over a year; its first marketing materials debuted at San Diego Comic-Con in 2012.
The title refers to Tom Ward, a handsome young lad played by Ben Barnes. He’s the seventh son of a seventh son and, as such, pressed into service as apprentice to the local “spook” Master Gregory (Jeff Bridges). He can best be described as a witchbuster – a spell-casting, swashbuckling vigilante who keeps the local spectres and goblins at bay. His previous pupil (Game of Thrones’ Kit Harington) is killed by Moore’s Mother Malkin and the timing couldn’t be worse. A bloodmoon is coming and the last one a century ago plunged the land into a devastating war. Master Gregory must stop Mother Malkin from doing, um, whatever nefarious thing she’s planning to do. Her plans are a little sketchy, but they definitely don’t have the common good in mind.
This means Master Gregory must commence browbeating young Tom into accepting his destiny, then showing him how to handle the business end of a pouch of silverbane. The big showdown is going to happen in this cool-looking castle inside a volcano where Mother Malkin lives with her sister, played by Antje Traue who spends her time on screen busting out of her bodice and not bothering to cover up her German accent. Traue’s got a daughter, Alice (Alicia Vikander), who looks sweet and pure and is sent down to spy on the scheming spooks. Alice uses her feminine wiles to worm her way into Tom’s heart and gain his trust. With flowers in her hair, she bathes nude in the moonlight looking a great deal like the White Rock soda girl.
Does the battle of good versus evil have room for love? Sure, why not? It’s also got room for a fun set piece with a slobbering giant, a cliff and a waterfall. While Ben Barnes doesn’t exactly light up the screen, he’s agreeable enough, and no one would doubt Jeff Bridges’s commitment to his own vision of this character. His voice is even stranger than his turn as Rooster Cogburn in True Grit, something like John Huston chomping on soggy poundcake. Bodrov likes to frame him head-on, with a cloak obscuring his eyes and his facial hair like half an asterisk jutting from his face. He gets a few good zings, too: his frequent retort of “wrong question!” when Tom asks something he doesn’t like isn’t much on the page, but he’s able to make it work.
While Seventh Son has trace elements of Saturday afternoon fun, its unoriginal nature gets the better of it. I mean, if you were ever a young man coming of age in a high fantasy and wore an elaborate locket of unknown origin around your neck, wouldn’t you know by now that it signified a noble heritage? There are flashes where you think Seventh Son is going to be wise enough to put a spin on the standard script, but by the end it just devolves into another loud, messy CGI brawl. How much more ruined masonry can moviegoers take? A lot, it seems, as this genre seems to be in no danger of going away.
• Seventh Son is released on 6 February in the US and on 27 March in the UK
