The Last Witch Hunter [M]

Centuries ago a group of hunters quested to track down and destroy the Witch Queen. One man did so, but at the price of becoming immortal. For eight hundred years Kaulder has been helping keep the peace between humans and witches, hunting down and imprisoning those who rebel and threaten the peace. But when his advisor and friend gets attacked and cursed, things become personal. The plot thickens as he uncovers a shadowy plan to resurrect the Witch Queen, which would certainly destroy the world. 

My guy’s and my initial motive for watching this movie was that it looked delightfully bad, which might lead us to distract ourselves from it. However, we were both pleasantly surprised to find that it was more engaging than we’d thought. By no means a cinematic masterpiece or even a ‘good’ movie; there were some pretty major hiccups and flaws in the plot and character arcs, The Last Witch Hunter is a fair flick and it does deliver an experience. What that is I hope to come to some conclusion as I write this… 

Let’s first talk about what needed work. The story itself is pretty predictable, but one thing that really did let the film down was the fact that it couldn’t seem to solidly decide on what genre it wanted to be. From the beginning we get the exciting and adrenaline-pinching experience of a fantasy action movie opening with a climactic battle scene. But then we shift to the present and it takes a bit of a turn. There are many hints that the road it will now take is that of the contrasting buddy comedy, where the two clashing characters of Vin Diesel and Elijah Wood will provide some fun Tommy Lee Jones vs. Will Smith type story. But then it suddenly shifts again and we have this hinting at a possible comedic-romantic-friendship-y thing between Vin Diesel and Rose Leslie. And then the revenge story takes up again, and the quest narrative, and finally the not-at-all-shocking revelation of ‘hey yeah, we’re gonna resurrect the Queen and destroy your world’. The rest you can guess for yourself. I have to say that this movie just didn’t know how to balance itself and it tried to be all these different things… like a toddler sulkily playing with something they don’t really want to play with but have nothing else to do. 

Poor old Elijah Wood’s character had some real potential and he appears to be central in the beginning, but then gets completely back-seated by the appearance of Rose Leslie’s character. All this falls down to a lack of fourth dimensional thinking on the writing side of the spectrum; there is a distinct feeling of attacking the film one scene at a time without any real plan. 

But on the bright side, the visual effects are very striking with mass amounts of CGI money being spent. I liked how the Witch Queen wasn’t some classic, sultry Disney seductress, but this gnarled woman-tree amalgamation. And some of the powers and tricks of the characters were quite interesting and fun to watch. 

Starring Vin Diesel, Rose Leslie, Elijah Wood, Olafur Darri Olafsson, Rena Owen, Julie Engelbrecht, Joseph Gilgun, Isaach De Bankole, and Michael Caine, The Last Witch Hunter is really about as good as it sounds; I mean, the ‘last’ anything in the title works as a bit of a kiss of death. The special effects were pretty good and the performances were solid, but what let it down was its confusion as to what type of film it wanted to be. Filled with action, drama, comedy, betrayal, and reluctant friendships, it’s a fine movie, but it definitely is nothing special and you could absolutely live a full and happy life without having seen it.