Everybody knows how you tell if someone’s a witch. It’s been a cold hard for 40 years now. You set them upon your largest set of scales, and if they weigh the same as a duck, they’re made of wood, and thus a witch (that’s right “science witch”). In the same way as many creatures classically perceived as evil, popular fiction has also enjoyed endearing witches as protagonists or at least casting them in neutrality or grey shades of morality. Be they teenagers with talking cats, housewives with twitchy noses, or professional police consultants, combing the traditional aspects of their lore and powers with modern times and society is often a potion for success. Now, Vin Diesel is looking to down that broth on the big screen in The Last Witch Hunter. The result is shambolic but quite a lot of fun.
800 years ago while slaying the Witch Queen he was cursed with immortality. Now, Kaulder (Vin Diesel – Fast & Furious, Guardians of the Galaxy), works for the Axe & Cross organisation policing the truce between humanity and witches. When a new threat seeks to destroy humanity once more he must team with a beautiful dream walker, Chloe (Rose Leslie – Game of Thrones, Downtown Abbey) and his novice priest liaison, Dolan (Elijah Wood – Lord of the Rings, Wilfred).
In tone and approach, The Last Witch Hunter feels oddly reminiscent of the Keanu Reeves fronted Constantine. It rushes about from one location and random character to the next without giving a full understanding of what’s going on. Yet in the majority, it delivers such blissful enjoyment while doing so that can just sit back and enjoy the events in isolation without being too hung up on their connection. This is best highlighted in the opening (800 years ago) attack on The Witch Queen’s lair. We’re given no context for her powers, minions or much else, what's going on as a bearded and Viking darned Vin Diesel starts swinging his flaming sword around, but it’s still Vin Diesel swinging a flaming sword around!
As the film develops, there are some world-building foundations laid with good familiar associations that genre fans will recognise. The Human/Witch truce setup feels nicely influenced by Night Watch, with a steady peace in place but people on either side keen to start a war again. The central dynamic of Kaulder and Dolan (charged with advising Kaluder and recording his work) feels a curious flip on the classic Slayer/Watcher relationship of Buffy. Instead here, Kaulder’s “Slayer” figure is vastly superior in age and experience and Dolan’s “Watcher” the child by comparison. This becomes great fun in the early stages as older retiring Dolan figure, preceding Elijah Wood’s character is played by Michael Caine; to whom Kaulder fondling calls “kid”. It’s a shame the pair don’t get more time together as they show some great chemistry and produce some great laughs by pledging Caine as old fashioned and Kaulder as down with modern technology.
The biggest weakness is still plot and story. There are enough distractions to divert your gaze from it, but at times its shortcomings are inescapable. The film spends half its time seeing its hero obsessing over reliving an old memory without enough explanation why. For the most part, we’re pledged a figure known as Belial (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson – The Secret Life of Walter Mitty) as our villain whose motives are all over the place, and ultimately gets killed off in the most casual fashion. Many aspects of the apparently abundant and flourishing witch society aren’t given any explanation (although that partly could be sequel bait). Some attempts to integrate historical fact, like the Salem Witch Trials, into the morality of this modern witch society fall rather flat. The dreams/visions card gets played too often causing in the inconsequential nature of many events to have a detrimental effect on those meant to carry significance. Finally, Wood’s young Dolan has some lengthy periods of absence that detach him from the story, especially in his pledged sidekick capacity.
The visuals, be they representations of spells and magic or the withered tree rendering of The Witch Queen (Bedevere was right, she is made of wood!) cast some wonderful imagination onto the screen and at times are downright spellbinding. The odd highlight becomes the Hobbiton makeover effect of making green wildlife flourish elaborately indoors. The insect cast members also do the film proud, from an early blind character using swarming mystic blue butterflies in place of a guide dog or the end game swarm of plague flies drifting into the city sky. A couple shots miss. Most notably a “Sentinel” construct that looks like a rejected design for The Maze Runner’s Grievers.
Vin Diesel has ever been “the franchise hunter” and he might have something here with Witch Hunter as it taps into a similar market to the Underworld film series. He goes unconvincingly OTT in the more dramatic moments but in general, Kaulder is good, likeable creation that we could stand seeing more of. GoT’s favourite redhead of the Free Folk does well in her mainstream cinema debut. She brings much of the feisty charms that made Ygritte work so well and holds her own against her more experienced co-stars. Wood, sadly, is the broom that doesn’t measure up. He gets some good awkward and nervous laughs in but even his tragic back story fails to make him endearing, not helped at all by Michael Caine’s vastly superior preceding turn. Elsewhere, Arrow fans will spot Bex Taylor-Klaus (aka Sin) in an early plane sequence and the eagle-eyed will also spot former WWE Superstar, Kurt Angle, as a background bodyguard.
The Last Witch Hunter is a film that may suffer on the small screen, but in a cinema capacity does offer much to enjoy. While many parts can be technically faulted, most don’t detract from the initial appeal; they’ll just start creeping in afterwards. This is not this year’s I, Frankenstein nor is it a fantasy train wreck like Seventh Son. If you’re after a smart and serious film fix, stick to The Martian. If you want something fun, you can just kick back with..... okay, you should still go with The Martian, but Witch Hunter makes a good second choice.