Seventh Son – Movie Review

Seventh Son – PG-13
Release Date: Fri 06 Feb 2015

Seventh Son is a fantasy action movie based on the book The Spook’s Apprentice. Spooks are a kind of knight that have some alchemy and magic. The apprentice and the Spook must defeat the evil witch queen Mother Malkin (Julianne Moore.)

The high fantasy starts off well enough. We meet Jeff Bridges’ Master Gregory (the Spook) and his previous apprentice played by Kit Harrington. They are called upon to save a child who is possessed by Mother Malkin, a witch who can appear as a woman and a dragon. They have an excellent scene fighting her before she kills the apprentice and escapes, with Gregory promising to find her.

The movie then starts down the extremely well-worn trail of Gregory finding the chosen one – the seventh son of a seventh son – and training him to be his next apprentice so they can ultimately defeat Malkin. This is where we meet Tom (Ben Barnes) and watch him become the reluctant hero he so obviously is written to be. Kit Harrington was more entertaining in his short role than Barnes ever is as Tom. There is a love interest in Malkin’s niece, a witch named Alice (Alicia Vikander) who is sent to spy on Gregory and Tom. She seems to be able to teleport to them and back at will. Mother Malkin and her sister can turn into dragons. It is never properly explained why they essentially sit back and wait for Gregory and Tom to come kill them.

That early sequence with Kit Harrington as the apprentice all the way through to Mother Malkin flying away is told with humor and efficiency. It is thereafter unspeakably boring to watch them essentially do the same sequence again but drag it out for 90-minutes. Seventh Son is terribly boring and manages to be less entertaining than just about any other fantasy story with this same tired plot. Unless you are having trouble sleeping or want to bore your children away from the TV, do not bother with Seventh Son.

Aaron and I saw it in the theater and had a discussion in the car: