There is a small and rather unimpressive subgenre of films that get so entangled in their own elaborate worlds that they forget to tell an interesting story. Whereas many movies take place in the real world and then add one or two new or fantastical ideas into the mix, these movies heap on so many backstories and classifications and rules that none of them have any dramatic weight, and it becomes nearly impossible to care.
So to the list that already includes movies like The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones and I, Frankenstein we now add The Last Witch Hunter, a supernatural thriller told entirely in plot points that seem like they were made up on the spot, but were always apparently a big deal. Stuck in a dreamlike nether realm? Good news: one of the characters can “dream walk,” and “dream walking” is very important and the movie simply forgot to mention it before but it’s very ashamed of you anyway for not being able to keep up.
The Last Witch Hunter stars Vin Diesel as Kaulder, a medieval warrior cursed to live forever by a Witch Queen. It’s not much of a curse though. The next time we see Kaulder it’s the 21st Century and he’s having the time of his life, bedding down stewardesses and driving sweet sports cars and exterminating evil with the aid of his “young” priest sidekick, Dolan the 36th, played by Michael Caine.
There’s a cute concept there, about elderly Michael Caine playing second fiddle to an immortal Vin Diesel, but it doesn’t get explored because Michael Caine’s character has to die, setting Kaulder on a journey to solve a supernatural mystery with Dolan the 37th, played by Elijah Wood, by his side. But don’t bother looking for any clues. Each storyline from this moment forward comes out of nowhere, is explained away in forgettable exposition, and leads only to another random plot point and one gloomy action sequence after another.
This isn’t so much a movie as a pilot episode, establishing a complex world of social structures and supernatural laws that might have been amusing to explore over a long period of time. But shoveled into a single film each new rule only exists to be broken. Only a memory potion can reveal the next plot point, unless an attractive young bartender (Rose Leslie) happens to be dream walker. Of course! How could we not have seen that coming? It’s not like they only just mentioned it one sentence before it became important.
Vin Diesel is in pure gravel mode in The Last Witch Hunter. He’s a likable actor, physically imposing but utterly approachable, but if filmmakers don’t give him anything emotional to work with he doesn’t bother bringing it from home. He’s a prototypical badass in a prototypical movie, filmed with dreary lighting and unconvincing CGI visual effects, and only occasionally brought to life by Diesel’s more charismatic co-stars, like Caine and Leslie.
The Last Witch Hunter isn’t terrible but it is in no way good. It’s an adequate straight-to-video time waster that seems to have accidentally been given a blockbuster budget and A-list stars. And the odds are exceptionally good that, after this weekend, we will never speak of it again.
Photos: Summit Entertainment
William Bibbiani (everyone calls him ‘Bibbs’) is Crave’s film content editor and critic. You can hear him every week on The B-Movies Podcast and watch him on the weekly YouTube series Most Craved and What the Flick. Follow his rantings on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
