This month started a little slow for me, but the writing bug has hit me of late. I held off on my last review just because my friends and I agreed to publish our reviews on a certain day. I didn't want to jump the gun, so I finished it but didn't publish it until the due date. In the meantime, I watched and reviewed The Childhood Of A Leader, so check that one out if you want to. For today I wanted to watch something that I have here at home. I had The Last Witch Hunter (2015) on my DVR, but I had been putting off watching it because I didn't know how much it fits into the horror genre. But, if people consider The Childhood Of A Leader to be horror, then this one isn't far off either.
Kaulder (Vin Diesel) has lived a very long time now. He was once a normal man with a family, but he was also a witch hunter. Along with a group of others, they took on The Witch Queen (Julie Engelbrecht) and won...barely. Kaulder ended up killing her but before she died, she cursed him with her eternal life, thus outliving his family. In the modern world, Kaulder still hunts witches, but only if they are doing wrong. He has friends within the church who help him when needed. Something is going on though. The Witch Queen is trying to live once again, but it is hard to always figure out who's side some people are on. With the help of Chloe (Rose Leslie), will they be able to stop The Witch Queen once again or will she be able to unleash the Black Death?
The Last Witch Hunter was co-written by Cory Goodman, Matt Sazama, and Burk Sharpless. It was directed by Breck Eisner. Many months back I noticed that my friend Aaron had watched this movie, so I decided to ask him about it. He liked it well enough, which fits on how I saw the film once I got around to actually watching it. I guess with Vin Diesel in the lead role, I was worried about how much of an action film The Last Witch Hunter would turn into. There are plenty of scenes that have action sequences to them, but I was surprised that they didn't go overboard with at all. In fact, I rather enjoyed the action. It was hard not to when there is a flaming sword involved at times. I also liked the story. It had a lot more depth to it than I thought it might. It has a good story arc for Kaulder, which was nice. I kind of liked Chloe, a youngish witch that Kaulder becomes friends with and gets her to help him. At times I found her to be annoying, as she didn't really seem to help all that much. She does help here and there, just not as much as I figured she would I suppose. There are also some nice little twists along the way as far as the plot went and who Kaulder could and could not trust. On the downside of things, I will be honest here, I was pretty distracted at times while I was trying the watch The Last Witch Hunter. I would pause it when it became too much of a problem, but even then I wasn't always as focused on the movie as much as I should have been. I was also doing laundry, which isn't all that far from where my TV is, so there was that background noise going on. That made some of what was being said in the film a bit hard to hear. More than likely I will watch this one again, but I felt I caught enough to give a fair opinion about it. My biggest complaint about this movie was actually some of the acting.
I can't say that I'm a big fan of Vin Diesel. I have never really considered him to be a bad actor, but he doesn't really do anything for me. I didn't think he was all that bad here, but again, he didn't do much for me. However, I did like the flashback scenes that involved hunting The Witch Queen and his family from back then. With the hair and beard, it gives Diesel a whole new look and I almost didn't realize it was him right away. I like Rose Leslie in her role, even if I didn't always like her character. There are some nice surprises to be found, like Michael Caine. He has a somewhat small role as Kaulder's church connection. Elijah Wood plays the part of Michael Caine's replacement. It was really Elijah Wood that I had the most problems with. I haven't been all that big of a fan of his either and I really felt that his acting just didn't fit in with this movie.
The effects can be pretty cool looking. There is a lot of CGI, but that is mostly limited to the spells that are cast. These were well done and generally small. They stood out some, but not so much in a bad CGI way. I also liked the makeup of The Witch Queen. She looks different from witches in other movies. Some of her hair was braided to almost look like a spine, so I thought that was cool looking. One witch ages rapidly in front of the camera, which I'm pretty sure was aided by CGI but ends with makeup. I didn't find anything to be all that gory though, despite people being killed with a flaming sword.
The Last Witch Hunter didn't do so well in theaters and generally got bad reviews. A sequel was announced prior to this film's release, but because of the poor performance, it did make a profit but that was thanks to the worldwide market, but that seems to be in doubt now. I would like to see a sequel, but I have to wonder where else can they go with the story? They have already had Kaulder battle the most powerful witch there is twice in the same movie. Making the next "bad guy" even more powerful always feels like a copout to me. I would be pretty picky about where the story goes next. I haven't read many reviews for this film, so I don't know why it wasn't liked all that much. I found it to be an okay film that was at least fun to watch. If you haven't given this movie a shot yet, maybe you should. It might just surprise you like it did for me.
3 out of 5 I want a flaming sword!
Kaulder (Vin Diesel) has lived a very long time now. He was once a normal man with a family, but he was also a witch hunter. Along with a group of others, they took on The Witch Queen (Julie Engelbrecht) and won...barely. Kaulder ended up killing her but before she died, she cursed him with her eternal life, thus outliving his family. In the modern world, Kaulder still hunts witches, but only if they are doing wrong. He has friends within the church who help him when needed. Something is going on though. The Witch Queen is trying to live once again, but it is hard to always figure out who's side some people are on. With the help of Chloe (Rose Leslie), will they be able to stop The Witch Queen once again or will she be able to unleash the Black Death?
The Last Witch Hunter was co-written by Cory Goodman, Matt Sazama, and Burk Sharpless. It was directed by Breck Eisner. Many months back I noticed that my friend Aaron had watched this movie, so I decided to ask him about it. He liked it well enough, which fits on how I saw the film once I got around to actually watching it. I guess with Vin Diesel in the lead role, I was worried about how much of an action film The Last Witch Hunter would turn into. There are plenty of scenes that have action sequences to them, but I was surprised that they didn't go overboard with at all. In fact, I rather enjoyed the action. It was hard not to when there is a flaming sword involved at times. I also liked the story. It had a lot more depth to it than I thought it might. It has a good story arc for Kaulder, which was nice. I kind of liked Chloe, a youngish witch that Kaulder becomes friends with and gets her to help him. At times I found her to be annoying, as she didn't really seem to help all that much. She does help here and there, just not as much as I figured she would I suppose. There are also some nice little twists along the way as far as the plot went and who Kaulder could and could not trust. On the downside of things, I will be honest here, I was pretty distracted at times while I was trying the watch The Last Witch Hunter. I would pause it when it became too much of a problem, but even then I wasn't always as focused on the movie as much as I should have been. I was also doing laundry, which isn't all that far from where my TV is, so there was that background noise going on. That made some of what was being said in the film a bit hard to hear. More than likely I will watch this one again, but I felt I caught enough to give a fair opinion about it. My biggest complaint about this movie was actually some of the acting.
I can't say that I'm a big fan of Vin Diesel. I have never really considered him to be a bad actor, but he doesn't really do anything for me. I didn't think he was all that bad here, but again, he didn't do much for me. However, I did like the flashback scenes that involved hunting The Witch Queen and his family from back then. With the hair and beard, it gives Diesel a whole new look and I almost didn't realize it was him right away. I like Rose Leslie in her role, even if I didn't always like her character. There are some nice surprises to be found, like Michael Caine. He has a somewhat small role as Kaulder's church connection. Elijah Wood plays the part of Michael Caine's replacement. It was really Elijah Wood that I had the most problems with. I haven't been all that big of a fan of his either and I really felt that his acting just didn't fit in with this movie.
The effects can be pretty cool looking. There is a lot of CGI, but that is mostly limited to the spells that are cast. These were well done and generally small. They stood out some, but not so much in a bad CGI way. I also liked the makeup of The Witch Queen. She looks different from witches in other movies. Some of her hair was braided to almost look like a spine, so I thought that was cool looking. One witch ages rapidly in front of the camera, which I'm pretty sure was aided by CGI but ends with makeup. I didn't find anything to be all that gory though, despite people being killed with a flaming sword.
The Last Witch Hunter didn't do so well in theaters and generally got bad reviews. A sequel was announced prior to this film's release, but because of the poor performance, it did make a profit but that was thanks to the worldwide market, but that seems to be in doubt now. I would like to see a sequel, but I have to wonder where else can they go with the story? They have already had Kaulder battle the most powerful witch there is twice in the same movie. Making the next "bad guy" even more powerful always feels like a copout to me. I would be pretty picky about where the story goes next. I haven't read many reviews for this film, so I don't know why it wasn't liked all that much. I found it to be an okay film that was at least fun to watch. If you haven't given this movie a shot yet, maybe you should. It might just surprise you like it did for me.
3 out of 5 I want a flaming sword!
