What is this witchcraft?

“Season of the Witch” has to be one of the most realistic films released this year. Nicolas Cage spends most of the movie trudging through excrement and rotting matter in medieval Europe, and after seeing the film, I felt like I too had been dragged through a huge pile of crap.

I’ll get the plot (what little there is) out of the way as quickly as possible so I can concentrate on making fun of Nicolas Cage. Cage plays a knight named Behmen, who has been enlisted in the Crusades with his best bud Felson, played by the usually dependable Ron Perlman. Behmen doesn’t mind killing hundreds of Muslim men, but when he accidentally kills a woman (who looks strangely European), he suddenly develops a conscience and leaves for Europe with Felson.

Behmen and Felson are recognized as deserters, and their only way to avoid imprisonment is to deliver a girl accused of being a witch to a distant abbey, where she will be put on trial. On the way there, the knights’ caravan is decimated by cheesy special effects. Eventually they realize the girl isn’t a witch — she’s possessed by a demon. Then there are some special effects that are so horrible that they kill both Cage and Perlman (no qualms about spoiling this movie for anyone).

So why does this movie suck? It’s obvious that little time and effort were spent on it. Besides the horrible effects, it’s poorly edited (in a dubbed scene where Cage and Perlman are on horseback, they speak without their lips ever moving). The acting is also stilted and unintentionally hilarious at times. And don’t get me started on Nicolas Cage’s haircut. It’s sad that he’s stuck in this forsaken movie; the man used to be an interesting actor and has been in some damn good movies in the past (“Adaptation” is one of my all-time favorites).

What’s worst about this film, though, is its revisionism on the subject of witchcraft. The witch hunts of Europe and early America were designed to root out the “lesser” elements of society. Women and the disadvantaged were killed as a scapegoat for society’s problems. By pretending that there may have actually been a few real witches hiding out there, the film risks legitimizing at least some of the thousands of deaths due to witch hunts.

Skip this movie, if not for your sake, then for the sake of someone who cares about you.