by Nicole Alvarez, Staff Writer
“Seventh Son” is an hour and two minutes long fantasy story that runs through the time worn plot of a young warrior fighting to save the world and the love of his life from the forces of darkness.
The movie introduces Jeff Bridges’ character, Master Gregory, first along with Julianne Moore’s character, Mother Malkin. Right from the start the audience can tell that there is some sort of personal conflict between the two characters. Then, while the movie does not make it obvious, there appears to be a time lapse of several years, or perhaps decades, before the movie even starts to get into the heart of the plot.
About ten minutes into the movie the audience finally meets Thomas Ward, the main character of this epic adventure. Fans of Joseph Delaney’s book The Last Apprentice: Revenge of the Witch know that Tom Ward is a curious 12-year-old seventh son of a seventh son; whereas, director Sergey Bodrov portrays Tom Ward to be in his late teens or early twenties. Alice, portrayed by Alicia Vikander, is also relatively older than her book-born counterpart but is still part of the coven headed by Mother Malkin.
Many of the characters are underdeveloped with little to no depth to them, among them Tom Ward. Mother Malkin and Master Gregory are really the only two characters that have any depth and even then their stories were somewhat shallow and clichéd. A number of characters were also added to the movie that never before existed in the book, from which the movie was adapted, leading to unanswered questions of where and why these characters came into being.
“Seventh Son” also gives a healthy dose of CGI effects from the witches’ transformations into various beasts along with scenery from long-distance shots of walled cities. The introduction of the boggart and the moments in which Tom and Master Gregory must outrun and outlive the creature is also a nice example of some of the CGI work in the movie. Characters like Tusk, Master Gregory’s servant, and Virahadra, the four-armed warlock, are excellent examples of fantastical creatures created using make-up techniques; however, there were a few scenes where Master Gregory’s make-up fails in comparison to other moments in the movie.
“Seventh Son” is all-in-all a mediocre movie, while it does have interesting special effects and a multitude of characters and cast, it still tries to pack a lot of plot into a short span of time. The characters themselves are mostly a reflection of the movie, generic and clichéd. While “Seventh Son” has its good points it does have its fair share of bad ones too and gets a 3 out of 5 stars.
