REVIEW — “The Last Witch Hunter”

The Last Witch Hunter follows the story of Kaulder (Vin Diesel) a warrior cursed and armed with immortality. He is humanity’s only protection against the power of witches, who live in secret among us. Thanks to an alliance between humans and witches, witches and humans have coexisted side by side fairly peacefully for hundreds of years. And anyone who tries to rock the boat has Kaulder to deal with.  However, things get especially out of hand when a group of dark witches not only attack his friend and mentor, Dolan (Michael Caine), but then proceed to ban together to resurrect the evil Witch Queen.

The Last Witch Hunter doesn’t really bring anything unique to the table. It recycles pre-existing storylines of the Catholic Church being secretly involved in the supernatural for the protection of ignorant humans. This could be acceptable but there is not nearly enough world building to firmly distinguish itself from other similar movies.  Throughout the movie, I didn’t feel like I was uncovering a secret world. It seemed more like writers were just making everything up as they went along. With every plot development there arose a lot of convenient and unrelated information to move things along.

The Witch Queen is probably the lamest antagonist I’ve seen in a while. Her motives are almost as weak as her title and she not very scary at all. And believe me, it takes embarrassingly little to scare me. Her lack of any dimension beyond “being evil” is a common trait among all characters in The Last Witch Hunter. Despite having a very capable cast (Michael Caine, Elijah Wood, Rose Leslie), the lackluster writing leaves every character falling flat.

All the negatives aside, if you’re like me and you like seeing our Vinny D kick major butt, act like a tough guy and say tough guy things, there’s a lot for you in The Last Witch Hunter. It’s nothing special but it has a pretty decent twist. I think this movie can be enjoyable if you firmly commit to not take it too seriously. This is the key. If you can accomplish that, you’ll be in the right frame of mind to enjoy this goofy fantasy adventure.

3/5