Hello, 2015. Hello, January movie season.
Seventh Son is the film adaptation of the book The Spook's Apprentice. It follows the story of a mentor, played by Jeff Bridges, as he trains the seventh son of the seventh son (of something) to defeat a witch because she wants to destroy the world (for some reason).
I only heard about this movie when I saw some articles pop up concerning it's release date push-backs (yes, plural), and that's almost certainly a bad sign (adding the fact that it is a January movie), but I remained positive because I saw some trailers, and they didn't look half bad. Well, I was pretty wrong.
This movie is The Last Airbender of 2015, and what I mean by that is that it's a good looking fantasy movie, with lore that looks to be interesting, but all of that is washed away by a lot of expository, pacing issues and a bunch of underdeveloped characters.
Let's start with the lore. The lore and backstory the movie presents looks interesting. There's a few characters and events there that really could've provided an intriguing and exciting story if delved into correctly. However, the film breezes through most of it and focuses on a bunch of other things instead. It doesn't help too that the film is mostly entirely composed of exposition. It never gives the fundamental elements of its story depth. The characters, the story, and the lore are all pretty surface level and quite boring since the film never took time to develop any of it.
The film has quite a lot of pacing issues. It's like the writers hadn't learned how to properly introduce nor develop characters. You spend like seven minutes focusing on our main character's home, family, background and "motivation", and then you're thrust into this adventure where you weren't really given enough time to connect nor really learn anything significant about this character.
Speaking of which, the characters introduced into this movie are pretty stereotypical fantasy adventure characters. Our two main characters, the young protagonist destined for greatness and the wise hot tempered mentor really don't have any other personality other than young protagonist destined for greatness and wise, hot tempered mentor, respectively. Continuing on with our checklist, we have the underdeveloped love interest (check!), the evil villain with magical powers (check!), and the henchmen that are there for special effects use (check!). They're all underdeveloped characters with the film not really showing any motivation as to why they do this or do that.
I will, however, say that a couple action sequences here and there are watchable and almost entertaining, if you can get past the pretty ugly special effects. It's not a fantasy extravaganza, and it's certainly no Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter, but if you're looking for a redeeming factor in this movie, that is where you'll find it.
The acting is pretty satisfactory. The lead actor, Ben Barnes, wasn't horrible. He did hit a few comedic notes here and there, and he was certainly better than Jeff Bridges, who apparently thinks making himself sound like he's gargling water while talking is "acting". Julianne Moore is in this movie, that's pretty depressing for her, but she's good. She's always at least good in a movie, so there's that. I don't know who allowed Alicia Vikander to have a main role in an fantasy adventure film, but that person is insane if he/she thinks Vikander can act. What makes it worse is that she had a scene with Julianne Moore, and she just totally flopped. Also, Kit Harrington and Djimon Honsou are in this movie for a few minutes, if you want to see them collect their paychecks.
Seventh Son is a movie that is underdeveloped and generically boring in all the wrong places. Some of the acting and the action in the movie is satisfactory, but it doesn't save it. You may have some fun with it, but I doubt it. It's not as bad as The Last Airbender but it sure belongs in the same bunch.
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