Starring: Jeff Bridges, Ben Barnes, Julianne Moore

Genre: Action/ Fantasy

For centuries a spook named Master Gregory (Bridges) has protected his country from witches, boggarts and ghouls, but he is now looking for a young apprentice to carry on with his work. However after the most powerful of witches, Mother Malkin (Moore) escapes and kills his latest apprentice (Kit Harrington), Gregory must now find a new apprentice in the form of Thomas Ward (Barnes), a seventh son of a seventh son just like Gregory was. However, to help Gregory defeat Mother Malkin and thwart her evil plans, Thomas must learn almost immediately the skills which Gregory took decades to master.

I remember earlier in the year watching Jupiter Ascending and assuming the Academy had not seen it when voting for Eddie Redmayne, well it seems clear that the same can be said about Julianne Moore for Seventh Son. She should be thoroughly ashamed for not only her pantomime standard performance, but so should she and every single other person involved in this absolute detritus of a film.

The only thing that sets Seventh Son apart from the cheap straight to DVD movies we see on the Syfy channel is its budget and the sight of big name actors. However the intrusively excessive (but probably quite expensive) CGI is actually equally as terrible as the script and performances. The book may well have been good, and the overall plot of this film adaptation is actually as generic as could be expected from this genre. This however is not necessarily a problem as this kind of genre with this kind of generic story can be great fun if done well, but it is almost impressive just how bad Seventh Son is.

Thankfully Seventh Son is only 102 minutes long, but it is still 102 minutes that one will never get back, and it also means that the director and writers (including Steven Knight who really should know better!) have to cram in as much in as possible, making everything almost impossible to follow or care about. Indeed, the one and only compelling thing about this film is trying to understand Jeff Bridges’ Gandalf impression; he of course has form with his voice acting in True Grit and R.I.P.D., but here may as well be speaking a different language. Whether he knew this film was terrible and so intentionally gives as bad a performance as possible to make a point or is just plain bad is a question far more interesting than anything in the plot. However, we all know how good Bridges can be, so it may well be the former.

Even if the obviously talented cast of young actors and supposedly seasoned pros were to give the performances of a lifetime it would not have mattered, Seventh Son is a hideous mess of a film with no redeeming features whatsoever. Films can be bonkers and make no sense, but yet still manage to entertain such as Jupiter Ascending, but Seventh Son is just offensive to the intelligence, ears and eyes of all who watch it.

A storytelling detritus of the highest order; Seventh Son is a hideous mess of a film whose storytelling incompetence is as impossible to follow as the excessive CGI is intrusive, the one sole interesting thing about this film is figuring out exactly what language Gandolf Bridges is actually speaking!

1/10