The Season Of The Witch (2011)

I'd been awaiting Season Of The Witch to drop onto DVD since I first saw trailers for it in 2011, as it looked to share the grim and gritty stylings of last year's Black Death (with Sean Bean), but with the added bonus of actual monsters for the knights to fight.

And it is like The Black Death - being set around the same time - and even has a whiff of The Name Of The Rose about it, yet despite this - and a reasonably stylish final conflict - there's no escaping the fact that Season Of The Witch is ultimately a very humdrum film.

It's not bad per se (if you like this sort of pseudo-Dungeons & Dragons, medieval adventure romp - which I do), it just could have been so much better.

At times it almost feels as though everyone is simply going through the motions to get the film wrapped up and finished so they can get on and do other things.

Nic Cage and Ron Perlman are a couple of disillusioned crusaders who desert the battle front after being ordered to slay women and children.

On their way home they stumble across a town in the grip of a virulent plague and are charged by the local Cardinal (Christopher Lee) with transporting a young girl (Claire Foy) to a remote monastery, where she can be tried for witchcraft and rituals performed to purge the disease from the land.

At first Nic doesn't believe she's a witch - despite demonstrations of her supernatural physical strength - but as the six-day cross-country journey progresses, and members of their party start being killed, he begins to change his mind.

However, it's not until the group of travellers reach the monastery that the truth of the situation is revealed.

There are some nice touches in Season Of The Witch, with the most important being the undermining of the typical cliché of this genre that the Church has been torturing an innocent girl (because it's not that straight forward and I rather wish more had been made of this during the progress of the story).

However the obstacles the group have to face along the way seem rather underwhelming, despite director Dominic Sena's attempts to up the stakes - the "rickety, old wooden bridge that looks like it won't support your weight" has been done to death (was anyone surprised that it fell apart AFTER they got across?) and what was with the pack of wolves that mysteriously transformed into slightly more aggressive wolves?

Ex-Misfit Robert Sheehan turns in a solid performance as the runaway choir boy who wants to be a knight, Ulrich Thomsen is superb as the grizzled, but reliable, man-at-arms and Stephen Campbell Moore is surprisingly good as the priest Debelzaq, who travels with them. Initially it is clear that we are supposed to see him as the enemy, but as the plot develops and he protects the witch from a summary execution, you realise that he truly believes in justice and not just simple vengeance.

However, it's Cage and Perlman - names I usually associate with memorable performances - that are phoning it in for most of the movie's 90 minutes. And the monsters (even the zombie monks) were rather a case of too little, too late.

Black Death (2010)

Fourteenth Century England is in the grip of the bubonic plague and bishop's envoy Ulric (Sean Bean) is leading a band of grizzled mercenaries to investigate rumours of an isolated village that has mysteriously remained untouched by the plague.

Driven by the belief that this 'miracle' is the work of an evil necromancer with the ability to raise the dead, they recruit novice friar Osmund (Eddie Redmayne) to guide them through the marshes that form the final stage of their journey.

However, all  are quite unprepared for what they find in the nameless village.

With strong overtones of Apocalypse Now (and its inspiration Heart Of Darkness by Joseph Conrad), and a sprinkling - because of its powerful religious motivations - of The Wicker Man, Black Death is a flawed gem.

While Bean growls his way through charismatically as the grizzled anti-hero Ulric (a fine addition to a portfolio that embraces Richard Sharpe, Ned Stark and Boromir) and Eddie Redmayne - star of the excellent Medieval drama The Pillars Of The Earth as well as many laudable movie appearances - is great as the conflicted priest, the film has issues with its pacing.

The award-winning Black Death is suitably grim and gritty visually, but misses opportunities on its journey to the village to further explore the horrific, apocalyptic world director Christopher Smith (of Creep and Severance - not that one, the 2006 film - fame) has crafted.

Ulric's party of coin-hungry soldiers are a gloriously dirty, stinking, vicious bunch of veterans, torturers and murderers, but they are also complex individuals rather than just cookie-cutter thugs, even though they are secondary characters on Osmund's journey of self-discovery.

There is a wonderful, unnerving scene when the travellers meet a party of flagellants heading in the opposite direction down river, but we could have done with a few more moments like this before the final act.

The film then features a drawn-out epilogue, detailing the aftermath of the events that take place in the village, which is just a shade too long and overbalances the narrative as it repeats the point it is making a couple of times.

But this doesn't stop Black Death from being a powerful indictment of the 'brainwashing' power of organised religion and the excesses it can drive someone to if they believe 'God' is on their side.

Ultimately, neither the believers nor the non-believers come out of this in a particularly good light, but at least the film raises the issue in the first place.

Those looking for some kind of medieval torture fetish fare will be disappointed. Although not overly gory, Black Death isn't without its moments of blood letting, yet the few instances of torture - or suggested torture - aren't depicted graphically.

Conversely, the one real extended fight scene - a battle between bandits and Ulric's men in the woods - is more akin to a barroom brawl (with swords, maces and whatever-comes-to-hand) than any sort of elegant or stylised swordplay.

Perhaps too much information is relayed to the audience through voice-over and exposition as well (the 'explanation' of what's going on to Osmund, in the misty marshes, is heavy with atmosphere but maybe a bit of an infodump of something we probably could have worked out for ourselves).

It's a pity that the end result of Black Death doesn't quite reach the film's ambitions, because it has the look and mood down perfectly, managing to be psychologically unnerving as well as viscerally exciting and mentally challenging.