Director Sergei Bodrov
Staring Ben Barnes, Julianne Moore, Jeff Bridges
Rated M
Score 2/6
Young Thomas is apprenticed to the local Spook to learn to fight evil spirits. His first great challenge comes when the powerful Mother Malkin escapes her confinement while the Spook is away.
Before I get too far into things there is a small amount of housekeeping, The Seventh Son is based on a 2004 novel written by British author Joseph Delaney The Spook’s Apprentice which is the first book in the Wardstone Chronicles. The little that I have read of The Wardstone Chronicles the age of the hero Tom in the movie was clearly increased from the age he was in the book (12) I can only assume that this decision was made for labour reasons.
It was always good to see adventure fantasy movies that do not have the budget of an independent movie, because it gives the filmmaker a scope to deliver something that is very visually spectacular. However, that being said because this was adapted from a children’s fantasy novel series a certain amount of restrictions seem to have been placed on the filmmakers when it comes to the action sequences. To the point that from the point of a 32 year old the action scenes in movies like The Green Berets or The Great Escape make the action scenes in the Seventh Son look a little tame. Yes, these movies are in completely different genres but sometimes a little bit of blood goes a long way. Perhaps it would have been good if this had a vibe similar to the 2008 television series The legend of the seeker. I got the impression that the movie was teetering on the edge of being dark but it was not allowed to take those first few steps of that line. Maybe the filmmakers where hoping on getting the second movie in the franchise but that would have been only possible if the books had the mainstream notoriety that the twilight franchise did and somehow I seriously doubt that the Wardstone Chronicles achieved that kind of success.
Fans of Game of Thrones might not like this one to much because even though Kit Harrington does have a role for this movie (tiny spoiler alert) his character doesn’t last for that long. As good an actor somebody like Jeff Bridges is I just got the impression that he really wasn’t trying that hard to give anything resembling a performance. It was almost as if he was recycling the performances that he gave in 2010 in True Grit with Rooster Cogburn.
