THE LAST WITCH HUNTER – The Review

Boring and predictable, THE LAST WITCH HUNTER is dreadful fantasy which will probably reach the upper echelons of countless ‘worst of’ lists come the end of the year. THE LAST WITCH HUNTER opens in the middle ages, where squadrons of Viking/warriors are battling witches who have unleashed the Black Death upon mankind. Valiant hero Kaulder (Vin Diesel with cool scraggly beard), defeats the all-powerful big-cheese Witch Queen (Julie Engelbrecht), annihilating her minions in the process. But before she dies, she places the curse of immortality on Kaulder, denying him an afterlife reunion with his dead wife and daughter. Jump ahead to contemporary New York City (played by Boston) where a clean-shaven Kaulder is hunting witches for a secret organization called ‘The Axe and Cross’, getting his orders from ‘Dolan the 36^th’ (Michael Caine). After the 36^th is murdered and replaced by the squirrely 37^th (Elijah Wood), Kaulder teams up with young good-witch-turned-Manhattan-witch-bar-owner Chloe (Rose Leslie ) to battle Queen Witch who has returned for an epic showdown with Kaulder and to destroy mankind (or something like that) in the process.

THE LAST WITCH HUNTER often feels like the kind of film that would work better with even less plot – if they’d simply outlined the story as “we got to stop that witch” and then just rattled through the action sequences as quickly as possible. Director Breck Eisner tries to use special effects to cover up the film’s many weaknesses, but even on that point he fails badly. There’s a flaming tree/bone monster (lots of fire in this movie – Vin’s sword is often on fire!) called ‘The Sentinel’ that drags bad witches into a sort of ‘witch prison’ limbo that wouldn’t scare a 6-year old. There’s a massive swarm of flies to threaten Manhattan in a climax that that ends before it begins, and there’s Vin Deisel wielding that flaming broadsword for several bloodless PG-13 battles.

Not that I expect much range from Mr. Diesel but in THE LAST WITCH HUNTER he lacks the charisma and presence he delivers in the Fast and Furious franchise, standing around looking glum mumbling lines like “I know I’ve killed every one of you. I’ve done the math!” This kind of film needs a good villain to liven up the lame material – someone to vamp and camp it up, but Julie Engelbrecht as the evil queen is simply a bland mix of make-up, CGI and augmented vocals. Michael Caine phones in his extended cameo, while both Elijah Wood and Rose Leslie look like they want to fire their agents. My expectations for THE LAST WITCH HUNTER were pretty low, but not this low. Maybe some over-the-top cheesiness, or deadpan moments, or self-awareness, or fun would have helped but THE LAST WITCHUNTER takes itself way too seriously and the result is dismal. When fantasy film fans gather in generations to come, THE LAST WITCH HUNTER will be remembered as one of the immortal low points of the genre.

1 of 5 Stars