Vin Diesel comes along with a new character for a new franchise, the fact that it simply feels just the same as all his other characters is somewhat unfortunate, Yep that's correct, this might as well be a prequel to his Riddick character, Riddick in medieval times and Riddick in the our present. Or the mumbling Toretto, or the mumbling Xander Cage...you see where I'm going with this. My point is, Vin Diesel can't really act and all his performances are virtually the same, the same mumbling hairless lump of meat.
So, what have we here then, an immortal (oh Christ!) who must save the world from a plague, fabulous, originality torpedoes away! The film starts in the dark/Middle ages where Riddick leads a band of witch hunters into a witch lair to kill the Queen (the Queen apparently having unleashed the black plague to kill off humanity). They succeed in doing so but Toretto is killed in the process, or is he? actually the witch Queen curses him with immortality (some curse). Jump to our present and Xander Cage remains a witch hunter in cahoots with a secret organisation (the church), protecting humans from witches with the aid of a priest. As you can guess one male witch is trying to bring the Queen back to life so witches can gain control again and its up to Vin Diesel to stop this along with his plucky, young, sexy female witch accomplice (a must in these types of movies).
Oh for fucks sake where to start, this is basically the Underworld franchise with witches, to a degree. The old use of immortals and protecting humans from classic mythological creatures that date back through the ages. the thing of fantasy and fable etc...Everything in this movie is a total cliche, and what's more they are cliches we've all seen a shitzillion times. Kaulder (Vin Diesel) in our present is clearly a super rich bloke, a kind of Bruce Wayne type chap with lots of neat gadgets and his own Batmobile. What's even more stupid is the fact they actually cast Michael Caine as his religious assistant, yeah you knew the Alfred reference was coming the minute I mentioned that, but for a good bloody reason right! I mean seriously, you make the lead character a supernatural Bruce Wayne type with his own big black super car, and then you actually cast Michael Caine as his butler, for fucks sake! And why make this guy rich anyway, just because you're immortal does that automatically mean you will acquire lots of wealth over the centuries? plus wouldn't that make you more of an easy target being super rich and driving around in super cars.
Yeah so anyway, apparently there has been this war going on between humans and witches, presumably since the dawn of man? dunno. Why is there this war? dunno, presumably because it just sounds cool, and witches are obviously evil where as humans are obviously good? guess so. Naturally in our present most witches have become utterly liberal and completely good, in true Harry Potter form. We see most them are now merely tattooed sexy young people that hang around in neon lit bars performing light-hearted magic tricks for each other. Amazed there wasn't any stripper witches performing at the same time actually, same sex lesbian witch sex etc...Yep so most female witches are young with tats, flowing long hair, black fingernails...they're all basically sexy goths and emos. Whilst the blokes also have long hair, natty facial hair, quirky Victorian attire and often some funny visual gimmick be it on the body or in their style. The really outlandish ones are on some kind of ancient witch council that are the judge and jury of all witches, and then you get the odd ones that are high within human society, such as the fashion world where every witch is a super sexy fema...zzzzz. I'm still not sure why that old blind witch bloke seemed to have powers over hundreds of butterflies, what the flip was all that supposed to be about??
The main problem with this movie is the convoluted and over saturated supernatural plot. They have set up this universe where witches exist with all this magical hocus pocus, but none of it is really explained and what is explained just sounds like nonsense. There are so many stupidly surreal names and words, potions, magical items etc...flying about in this film you have no clue what they're talking about, and there isn't an original novel to refer to (unlike certain kiddie flicks). You're simply suppose to take all this in, just accept the crapola that makes no sense. For example, the witch council (or whatever) judge bad witches, when found guilty they are put away in some kind of witch prison. Now for some reason a huge monster is required to do this? the council awaken 'the sentinel' which is a big insect-like thing made out of rock, or is it wood? beats me. This things drags off the bad witch to the prison...which turns out to be within rock? a rock wall within some huge cavern? what?? So what's this huge expansive cavern for? are all the rock walls full of bad witches? why rock? oh Lord! There is also a mass of repetitive and dull flashback/dream sequences which follow Kaulder's earlier life with his family along with visions of the future, plus some mind games etc...Its all highly boring, time consuming and annoying.
The film also can't really decide what way to go in terms of its content and gritty nature. Is this an action thriller for adults or teens? is it a more light-hearted horror? are we supposed to be scared? is it a more grown-up version of Harry Potter? I really wasn't sure because I found myself basically in limbo throughout, limbo and bored to death. At times the film was definitely more light-hearted with the witch antics, then all of a sudden its swings into a full blown horror scenario and truly dark, and then (of course) we simply get CGI action schlock chock full of deus ex machina moments which was all quite simply pants. There was some nice use of makeup on the witch Queen, although she appeared to have a human spinal column coming off the back of her head? was that part of her hair? But easily the most interesting part of the whole bloody thing was the medieval set up at the start, this looked way more fun than all the present day tomfoolery. I really think a movie set during that time period was the better way to go, then you could of made the inevitable sequel in our present day. As it stands this was a myriad of by the numbers, wholeheartedly generic, utterly forgettable, throwaway garbage that failed to impress me at any stage of the game.
3/10
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