Season of the Witcholas Cage - a rant, review and summary. Here there be spoiler

[MalReynolds]

Season of the Witcholas Cage

The movie opens with a scene of some women accused of being witches hung off a bridge, despite their repentance. When the priest pulls their bodies up to perform the last rites, one of them starts to have a seizure. Then the third woman hung pulls him into the water below the bridge and… then he gets out of the river and climbs back onto the bridge.

I’m not sure, but wouldn’t it have been… more effective to just keep him on the bridge and have the third woman, who is clearly a witch, scare him by other means than pulling him into the water? I’m not entirely sure what purpose his dip serves. It’s not entirely unnerving, and there’s not even a jump scare to accompany his fall. He even ends right back where he started, on top of the bridge, performing the last rites. It just seems like a pointless waste of time. Then again, so does the rest of the movie.

Anyways, he starts reading the last rites as the third woman jumps onto the bridge, and then her skin turns all gray and her fingers get long, and the next shot is of the priest being hung. So he actually falls off the bridge twice. I’m not sure if the movie was going for irony or not. Probably not.

The movie then cuts to a very out of place Nicolas Cage standing in a line of Crusaders who are about to attack some infidels and he shares some banter with a less out of place, but still not really belonging there Ron Perlman. They joke about killing a bunch of people and decide whoever gets the highest score will buy the drinks for that evening. So then they fight and they brutally kill a whole bunch of people, and the scene is intercut with Nic Cage and Ron Perlman enjoying themselves and what look to be prostitutes at some bar.

Then the movie cuts back to some more battles, spanning four or five years. I don’t know. The subtitles went by progressively faster every time a new battle location or date popped up. The only real clear indicator that time was passing, besides the footer, was the fact that Nic and Ron started growing grizzly fucking beards.

For their last battle, they siege some castle. When the front door is broken in, they rush in and start stabbing, only to find to their horror – and my general amusement – that they are stabbing women and children… And this disgusts them.

I’m just going to run this by again for my own clarity – these guys bet alcohol on how many people they kill, employ probable prostitutes, and have been murdering in the name of God for several years – and they never thought they killed an innocent until now? I mean, I guess because no one on the battlefield was ever a woman, but at the same time, this can’t be the first city they’ve invaded or the first castle they’ve crashed. Were these special women? Or did all the ones before not really count?

So Nic and Ron quit the army and decide to be nomads I guess. They never really explain what their goal is once they leave. The next time we see them, which is the next scene, they’re wandering some rocky cliff.

I don’t mean to nitpick – oh, fuck, who am I kidding? Of course I do – but wouldn’t it have been more effective to start the movie with Nic and Ron wandering, and then give us backstory in doses? As they wander the rest of the narrative, Nic has flashbacks of stabbing that woman over and over again. It would have been far more effective to leave his past for the audience to discover, but instead we open with two major faults;

The first scene establishes that the movie will be scary and involve witches.

The second scene establishes that the movie will be action packed with swords and knights.

Neither of these turn out to be true. The movie lies to you as soon as it begins! That’s a horrible beginning.

And another thing – Ron Perlman just seems to be following Nic Cage around. He doesn’t seem too remorseful about killing all those innocent people. I guess if he had been, it would have taken some of the spotlight away from Nic Cage and I guess it’s a bad idea to split the audience sympathy if you’re not going to be a well written movie. Ron never seems to have his own motivation, existing simply to be there so Nic has someone to talk to before the other characters show up.

Anyway, they head to a farm looking for food and find that the owners are dead from the black plague, so they do the noble thing and set the house on fire and ride off. Despite both of them being hungry, they’re never shown killing any of the animals – who are just kind of roaming around – for food. So are they not really hungry? Why even have that in the script?

Ron decides their horses are shit and that they need to stop in the city on the horizon for new horses and Nic is worried that they will be made as deserters. They go anyway. Ron doesn’t bother covering his face, but Nic does. If I were Nic, I would have yelled at Ron a few times to cover up, because they’re both wanted fugitives, but neither of them are very bright.

Of course, they get discovered, but it’s not because Ron is noticed. Nic’s sword falls off his horse and someone notices the Crusade crest on it. Wait a second – if you’re an army deserter, why would you carry something that identifies you as a fleeing member of said army? That’s counter intuitive, and it’ll land you in jail! But both these guys are kind of dim so I guess it doesn’t matter that they carry around incriminating evidence all the time. It’s an idiot move that only exists to move the plot forward.

So Ron and Nic get thrown in jail, but they’re offered clemency from the bishop if they will accompany a small convoy to drop the Black Witch off at some monastery six days away. The general consensus is that the witch is causing the plague, and at first, Nic will have none of it. Then when he sees her, he changes his mind.

He criticizes the priest who will be accompanying them – de Ballzac, I swear that’s what his name sounds like – for poorly charting the course. Nic points out that the trip will take them over a mountain, through a valley, and into an area called The Wyrm Woods, where no man has ever escaped. Except those who made the map. Anyway, the monastery is on the other side of the woods. Nic points out what a bad idea it is, but instead of rerouting through safer areas, they decide to bring a merchant guide with them.

I mean, that makes total sense. Instead of avoiding the mountains and the Evil Woods of No Return, they want to plow straight through them – so long as they have a guy that has made it to the monastery and back.

Anyway, Nic says the only way he’ll go is if Ballzac promises the Black Witch a fair trial. I guess that’s kind of noble and everything, but she already confessed earlier in the movie, so the fair trial will be pretty open and shut. I think he brings it up to establish that he’s trying to make amends for killing all those women and kids earlier, but it doesn’t make any sense. She’s going to burn as soon as she gets there. He’d be a terrible lawyer.

So they head off with a young altar boy named Something, Ballzac, some guy named Beardo and the Merchant, who plays Al Capone on TV.

The first night they make camp, Nic tells a really bad joke about why he and Ron enlisted in the crusades. He sure doesn’t seem too shaken by his past now. Then he has a nightmare. Maybe he shouldn’t make tasteless jokes.

Beardo decides that he wants to kill the Witch, while she’s caged, because if her name is cleared at the monastery everyone will be mad. The Witch doesn’t really like this and through a convoluted series of actions, manages to get free. She makes a beeline for the nearest town and leads our heroes through some kind of ground maze until Beardo accidentally impales himself on Something’s sword, because Beardo thought he was chasing his dead daughter or something. And we see him chasing his dead daughter. We’re not sure right away if he’s just hallucinating, because his daughter is dead, or if the Witch is causing it.

Then the Witch tackles Ron Perlman and keeps him in a chokehold for a little bit. That’s kind of weird, because she’s played by a 98 pound girl, so she definitely has some superhuman strength going on. At this point, there’s no doubt she’s a witch and will die at the monastery.

Why don’t they just kill her?

Because they’re goddamn stupid, that’s why. They load her back into the cage and set off again. She talks to Nic Cage as they ride and she offers him absolution and atonement for his past sins, but he just kind of looks tired.

Then they come to a creaky rope bridge. Capone does not remember the bridge being so fucked up, and Cage yells at him for a little bit, but to be honest, I wasn’t paying much attention at this point.

Anyway Nic goes across the bridge with his horse first and we see one of the rope supports start to break and OH MY GOD. It’s been so long since I’ve actually seen this cliché in action. They walk the horses across one by one, and then have some rig setup to get the cart with the Witch on it across. Halfway through, the rope they are using to ease the weight burns Ballzac’s hand and the cart rolls to the center of the bridge, then they start pulling it up from the other side.

But everyone acts like letting go of the rope was a huge deal, when it wasn’t! Nothing bad even happened. Nic yells for a little bit and then decides that they will use the horses on the other side to pull the wagon up the rest of the way.

Wait, shouldn’t this have been something they discussed before they started moving the wrought iron cage across the rope bridge? It seems kind of dumb to just wing a plan like that. And then everyone acts like this is brilliance. How did they expect to get the cart up the other side of the bridge, which sags in the middle? Were Nic and Something just going to pull it?

Anyway, Something falls off the side of the bridge and the Witch catches him and pulls him back up with one hand. It’s really apparent at this point that’s she’s a witch. Why they don’t kill her now is beyond me.

Here’s something – if the movie was really trying to establish a, ‘is she, isn’t she?’ conundrum, maybe they shouldn’t have opened the movie with a scene revealing that witches ARE real in this world. It supposedly takes place in the real world, and the treatment of so-called witches throughout history has been gruesome and shocking, but we’re never given the chance to make up our mind whether or not she’s really in league with Satan.

So why even play around with the possibility that she’s not evil? What purpose does it possibly serve, other than to confuse the audience, who already know she is, in fact, evil? All of the characters seem to assume she’s evil as well. It’s a stupid song and dance that completely insults the audience.

Keeping along, they find themselves in Wyrm Wood, and they decide to make camp. I guess that’s a good idea, to make camp in the woods where men have had trouble escaping.

Capone decides he wants to kill the Witch and so he tries, but Nic and Ron stop him just before he can. So then she decides to thank them by summoning some evil wolves to fight them. You can tell the wolves are evil because their faces morph from looking kind of like wolves to looking like evil wolves. After the entire group battles eight or so of the wolves, they think they’ve won, but more show up and they get on their horses and ride.

As they ride off, Capone gets eaten.

All of that could have been avoided if they just didn’t make camp in the first place! It’s like some omniscient person told them to rest in the woods for the sole purpose of killing some of them off, because they had no logical reason to stop there. The woods are known to be both dangerous and fatal to travelers, so I guess everyone just left their brain at home for this trip.

As soon as Capone is eaten, Nic decides he doesn’t want to go on and he’s going to kill the Witch, and – wait.

Hold on.

He’s going to kill the Witch? Now? Capone’s death pushed him over the edge? Why? Throughout the whole movie he’s been the biggest proponent of keeping her alive so she can stand a fair trial, and now – after he’s seen her cause hallucinations, been given a report that she single handedly lifted Something, has tackled Ron to the ground – Capone is the straw that broke the camel’s back?

It’s a good thing they see the monastery on the horizon, because that’s what stops Nic from killing her. I guess he remembered she was due in court or something.

They head to the monastery and are shocked to find everyone dead of the plague. Great! Now how is she going to get a fair trial?

Turns out the whole Fair Trial thing isn’t really important because they find The Book of Solomon, the text used to attempt to kill a witch at the beginning of the movie, and bring it outside. The Witch is all like, ‘Uh, what about my trial,’ and everyone is like, ‘Fuck the trial, you gonna die,’ and the whole justice plotline is ended with no fanfare.

Ballzac starts reading the incantation and the Witch goes on a short monologue about how the Church has sent more to perdition than any devil worship, and this makes Ballzac realize they’re not dealing with a witch, but a demon, so he starts an exorcism and – wait.

Hold on.

The movie is called Season of the Witch. To recap, there has been one confirmed Witch in the whole movie – that hardly constitutes a season, unless the title implies it is ‘open season for witches.’ But even that’s not true, because we don’t see witches being killed indiscriminately. We see Nic go on and on about a fair trial.

Another thing to consider – to reveal that the Witch is actually a demon is supposed to shock the audience, but having never been faced with a demon in this setting, we’re not really sure what the big deal is. There seems to be an incantation in the book to take care of demons, and she’s locked in her cage, so it’s no huge thing.

Then the Demon melts the cage and flies off.

I wish I was kidding.

Nic and Ballzac and Ron and Something head into the monastery to try and figure out what the fuck is going on, and to battle the demon. Something gets knighted, and they head upstairs, only to realize that the Demon wanted to get to the monastery the whole time, which – wait.

Hold on.

At several points in the movie, she successfully has escaped her cage to kill members of her party. If she were so invested in getting to the monastery, why did she kill her protectors? Was it for fun? Was her objective the whole time just to fuck with everyone? We’re given a series of flashbacks that show her calming down when they mention they are bringing her to the monastery, but it still makes zero sense. Especially given that at any point she could have melted her cage and flown there herself. You could argue that she needed help passing through the holy gates, but that is never established in the movie at all. And if she really needed everyone’s help, why did she try to kill them all with wolves? You could argue that she was just going after Capone, but the wolves attacked everyone. What if they had all died? Would she have cared? What purpose do they even serve, besides being there to kill her at the end? Wouldn’t it have been better or easier to try and find some other way to tell a more cohesive story that ties everything together? The revelation that her goal the entire time is getting to the monastery is undercut because all of her actions in the movie seem to go against this.

When Nic and Crew get to the top floor, they find that the Book of Solomon is being copied over and over to help fight evil around the world, and they realize the Demon wants to destroy all of the copies and the original text, so – wait.

Hold on.

I still don’t understand this. Why would she bring a group of people that could potentially stop her from her goal – which is spreading the black plague – to her goal? Did she leave her brain at home? She says she’s been alive for hundreds of years, but I guess that doesn’t mean you have to be very smart, because she certainly isn’t.

Ron asks Nic if they’re fighting to kill the Demon or save the girl, and Nic replies both, because he’s still feeling guilty about murdering that woman in the crusades, I guess. He did keep having nightmares about it.

So, is the girl being possessed? Because if she is, then her body is going to be all jacked up. After all, the Demon took on full Demon form, including elongated limbs and wings and a giant head. Does Nic know that killing the Demon will save the girl, or is it just a guess? Going into the final battle, no one knows what the stakes are, not even the audience, which is just confusing. The rules are never explained to anyone. Are we supposed to guess that there’s actually a girl somewhere inside the Demon? There’s no evidence to prove this. She doesn’t even use the same voice!

Anyway, Ballzac starts to read the exorcism and the Demon shows up and raises a small army of zombie priests that can only be killed by decapitation. I guess this is cool and everything, because the fight is visually appealing with a lot of neat maneuvering and an interesting setting, but it seems really easy to cut heads off. At one point, Ron has a zombie on the ground and just kind of cuts at the head with a knife, which kills it. Maybe they’re weak because they were killed with the plague, or maybe everyone is just really strong in this movie. That’d explain why no one found the girl’s extraordinary strength bizarre.

Ron gets stabbed in the back, Ballzac gets his head twisted around, and all hope seems to be lost. Then it turns out that Ron isn’t really dead, and he head butts the Demon a few times and then gets set on fire, while Something starts reading the rest of the incantation.

This might have been a callback to earlier in the movie where Ron says he’d rather be hung than burned to death, so his demise may have been some form of dramatic irony, but it was such a throwaway line earlier in the movie that I don’t think anyone – much less the writer – picked up on it. Maybe he should have said something like, “I said I wanted to hang!” but he never says anything and just kind of burns.

Then Nic pins the Demon to the wall and the Demon stabs him a whole bunch, and the exorcism is finished and the Demon dies, leaving a naked girl on the floor.

Well, we got lucky. Turns out the girl was actually real and not a demon trick, and that she could be saved. And with Nic redeemed, he can now peacefully die. So he does.

Something buries Ron, Ballzac, and Nic, and then rides off with the girl, who is named Anna, who asks to know everything about the men that saved her, because she can remember nothing.

Then we get a voice over about how she will forever tell the tale, and tell it well, because she was there, and – wait.

Hold on.

She just said she couldn’t remember any of it. The narration is in direct conflict with what we just heard her say! That doesn’t make any sense!

The movie then has the decency to end.

Season of the Witch was pretty bad. It has an entirely boring opening that fails to establish any kind of tone or mood, and the movie tries to build tension with ambiguity, but can’t because it already buttfucked ambiguity in the ass when the movie began. The final third act simply defies any logic set up in the movie and ends on a confusing and sour note.

Anyway, don’t see it.

- EDIT: I was going to post pictures but my computer is shitting the bed, so maybe tomorrow.