Seventh Son

** out of ****

Seventh Son is a medieval fantasy with Jeff Bridges as a witch-hunting sage training a young man (Ben Barnes) how to fight evil spirits.  It isn’t very good looking. Some element of this movie's processing makes it look lower-grade than other films -when viewed on a large screen. Despite a few decent special effects, most of them are ugly. Like most 'special effects' movies there's too many artificial elements on the screen for any impact to be felt. It also doesn't help that the action is rather formulaic. 

But to its merit, it has actors who seem as though they’re having fun, real locations and a simple easy-to-follow plot –all adding up to some B-Movie charm, similar to films like Dragonslayer and Ladyhawke. If only it had the rich atmosphere eighties fantasies produced. Marco Beltrami's score brings it a little close to that feeling, but these days it's almost impossible for a film in this genre to show a little restraint, when it comes to the dependence on obvious CGI for every time something magic happens. 

Ben Barnes and Alicia Vikander seem to apply a generic, yet endearing kind of romance as the movie's two young and beautiful people. Jeff Bridges plays around with what might be miscasting and owns the role of an aging warrior. Julianne Moore also hams-up her role as a villainous witch. This is one weird sequel to The Big Lewbowski.