The film opens with promise: Vin Diesel walks into frame as a middle-ages warrior named Kaulder with a hilarious braided-beard and ponytail combo. Within the first few minutes, Diesel is inside a giant tree and stabbing a witch with a flaming sword as she sends swarms of insects rushing towards him. If this opening sounds amazing, then you’ll be disappointed to hear that the rest of the movie gets more boring and by-the-numbers after this awesome intro. And if this opening sounds terrible, then don’t bother coming to the theater.
“The Last Witch Hunter,” directed by Breck Eisner, is a perfect example of wasted potential. On paper, the idea behind the film looks like a surefire hit — the world is populated by witches in hiding, and Vin Diesel plays a badass immortal witch hunter/detective living in New York who’s been alive since his run-in with the witch 800 years ago.
Michael Caine is his mentor, similar to his role as Alfred in the “Dark Knight” trilogy, Elijah Wood is an apprentice to Caine, and Rose Leslie from “Game of Thrones” is Diesel’s magic sidekick. Caine’s character is attacked early on, and Diesel and crew follow the clues left by the attacker leading to an ultimate fight with the witch queen in which the secrets of evil magic are unearthed. Essentially, Diesel has to save the world from an evil witch, but certain actions in the third act damper the excitement.
To start with the positives, the magic used by the good and bad witches is wildly creative. The magic has nearly infinite possibilities, from evil purposes like creating the Black Plague to more social uses like reliving memories. Magic isn’t just spells either: characters use alchemy, potions and dark satanic symbols to add variety to the types of otherworldly events taking place. Most scenes with spikes jumping from walls or hallucinations altering reality were entertaining in all the right ways.
Unfortunately, that’s where the good parts stop. The story doesn’t seem to have an end goal in mind, and meanders aimlessly all around New York, choosing to show more explanations of how the magic exists in real-life rather than give the characters anything interesting to do. While this world-building works well in the beginning to get viewers accustomed to the universe being created, it gets old an hour in after nothing substantial happens after multiple red herrings leading the characters to pointless locations. Wood’s character in particular has terrible writing, only being introduced in the first 20 minutes then coming back at the very end to throw the plot into a pointless twist that left me frustrated.
When it comes to characters, “The Last Witch Hunter” doesn’t try to do much below the surface. A blind witch running a bakery and a model witch excelling in the fashion industry due to her appearance-altering magic offer cool premises, but they never get any details past their initial introduction. The story also has a bad habit of killing off everyone we meet except the main crew, which limits the possibilities of creativity in favor of a darker tone, which doesn’t fit with the flaming swords and sawed-off shotguns.
While none of the actors do a bad job, there weren’t any performances that stuck out as anything special except for Vin Diesel. His gravelly whisper of a voice and hulking figure fit well into the fantasy setting, and it was genuinely enjoyable to see him ditch the bald look for the aforementioned braided beard and ponytail in his brief opening scene.
Like the actors, Eisner didn’t bring much in the way of creative camerawork or set design. Everything aside from the magic is shot in the standard action shots you’ve seen before, and New York isn’t especially interesting for a fantasy setting. The score also didn’t offer anything interesting, which is a shame given the epic scores of past fantasy films.
But while most of the aspects of the film are mediocre, I can say with utmost certainty that the end of “The Last Witch Hunter” is a pile of garbage. I don’t want to spoil the movie, but characters make decisions that do not make sense and a certain plot twist soured the entire film for me. It was uncalled for, nonsensical and opened the entire film to plot holes and questions that could have been avoided with more thoughtful writing.
Overall, “The Last Witch Hunter” has a few gleaming moments, like the over-the-top opening and the unique magic. But the mediocre acting, directing and a terrible final act leaves “The Last Witch Hunter” hard to recommend to anyone except those craving a unique fantasy film.
_MOVE gives “The Last Witch Hunter” two out of five stars._
