VOD Review: The Last Witch Hunter (2016)

"Oh, Vin. Sometimes I wonder what goes through your mind when you read scripts."

Let's be honest about it: The Last Witch Hunter wasn't a great movie.

Critics universally panned it; and it only made $27 million domestic on a budget of $90 million, so crowds didn't exactly flock to it either. For us, it was just too clunky to love.

But let's be fair about it too: it wasn't that bad.

Watching this one was a lot like the watching Van Helsing for us; both movies are bland, sanitized, uninspired efforts that have fun air about them, but they offer no depth whatsoever.

We did like The Last Witch Hunter way better though.

In the Middle Ages (Dark Ages? Not sure), the magnificently-bearded Kaulder is a Witch Hunter. We only see him hunt one Witch, so we're not really sure how good he is at it, but it was the Witch Queen herself, so we have to assume that his skills are at least reasonably sufficient.

MAGNIFICENT, I TELL YOU.

When he catches up to the Witch Queen at her haunted tree fort, he manages to kinda kill her, thus ending her evil reign, but not before she curses him to live eternally; or at least until she returns 800 years later to pick up where she left off before he kinda killed her, because you know that's what's going to happen. You've seen this all before.

KILL IT WITH FIRE! TWICE.

Flash-forward to 800 years later where Kaulder is a modern man living in New York, and still hunting Witches. Not scary Witches like they had in the middle ages, mind you, but just normal-looking people who can cast spells and stuff. When a Witch murders his best friend, he gets a new best friend, and they set out to find who killed his first best friend, and they discover that the rise of the Witch Queen is imminent. Also, he meets a hot, ginger Witch, who teaches him how to love again.

Don't look at us, we don't write this shit.

NOTHING MEDIOCRE ABOUT HER THOUGH.

For us, The Last Witch Hunter is a sort of hybrid between Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters and Constantine, with a bit of Highlander and Van Helsing thrown into the mix. Or maybe it just tried to ape different aspects of those movies for its own benefit. I don't know, but overall, it felt way too safe and generic, and like it couldn't manage to find its own identity. It was a fun movie at times, and it didn't leave us feeling pissed off or frustrated, but something was just missing.

We really liked the premise, the cast, and watching Vin Diesel swing a flaming sword around. We also really loved the beginning of the movie which was set in medieval times far more than we did the modern-day setting that most of the movie took place in. They should have given us more of the medieval stuff, and Vin should have kept the beard throughout more of this one. It looked bad-ass.

THE FAUX-HAWK CAN STAY TOO.

The real problem with the movie was the script. We're not sure why, but It took three different writers to come up with a story which is littered with tropes, cliches, and uninspired familiarity, but it shouldn't have. The dialogue left a lot to be desired as well, especially with the cut-and-paste way in which the movie seemed to be edited. Lines like "Who said that a Witch can't hunt Witches?", "Salem was wrong, those women were innocent!", and "Witch prison!" were just shameful.

And having to watch the great Michael Caine utter a line like "Look at you, you ugly bitch of a morning" was just painful. He deserves way better.

The CGI was overabundant and bad at times, and the movie definitely could have benefited from the less-is-more motto in that department. I guess the PG-13 rating held the violence, action, and blood back, which is a shame; had they leaned more on practical FX, and pushed the envelope a bit more, the end result may have been better.

"ANYTHING ELSE YOU WANT TO CRITICISE, ASSHOLE?"

Why yes, Frobo Bagglins, there is...

They really should have centered the story around Rose Leslie's character, and had Vin Diesel's Witch Hunter play the periphery, much like Max did for Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road. Like she should have been sucked back in time to the Middle Ages via some sort of witchery gone wrong, where Vin Diesel had to protect her against hordes of Witches or something. That would have been cool.

Rose Leslie is a talented actress, and she was probably the most likable character in this one. We like Vin Diesel a lot too, but he just doesn't have the range to carry a movie like this by himself. It was cool to  watch him kick ass though.

THE LOVE SCENE.

Vin Diesel is mad cool, but some of his movies aren't so hot. Also, we really like Rose Leslie. A lot.

BEWITCHING.

If you can sit through movies like Van Helsing, or the later sequels in the Resident Evil and Underworld series, and enjoy them for what they are despite their flaws, then you'll probably be able to do the same thing with The Last Witch Hunter. It ain't great, but there is a lot about it that is pretty enjoyable, in a guilty pleasure sort of way.

I wouldn't but in on Blu-ray, but I'd definitely come over to your house and watch it if you did.

C

The Last Witch Hunter is available now on VOD, and hits Blu-ray & DVD on 2/2.

We've been under Rose Leslie's spell ever since we first saw her on Game of Thrones, and we're fine with that.

VOD Review: The Vatican Tapes (2015)

"If nothing else, Hollywood sure knows how to release, generic, bland Horror movies."

*There were a handful of movies in 2015 that we wanted to review, but didn't get to, so we're just going to go ahead and give them the Quick Review treatment now. We'll keep it really short and sweet.

Olivia Taylor Dudley was about the only thing about this movie that was worth noting. Sure that sounds kinda harsh, but listen, we're very judgemental... especially after sitting through a bad movie like this one.

Especially when said movie wastes the acting talents of guys like Djimon Honsou, Michael Pena, and Dougray Scott the way that this one did.

For shame.

After a hot, sexy, gorgeous, curvy, sassy girl cuts her hand cutting the cake at her own birthday party; ODs on painkillers; crashes a cab; tries to give a baby a bath; resists arrest; and talks to walls, everyone around her becomes convinced that she's possessed by Satan. Because they're obviously all sexist jerks, or something.

SHE'S POSSESSED ALRIGHT. WITH SEXINESS.

Having caught wind of this, two Vatican Priests (a Vicar and a Cardinal) decide to show up and try to exorcise the evil from the poor, hot girl, which results in them forcing her to eat communion wafers, and pulling eggs out of her mouth... which prompts her to levitate, kill everyone, and then go on a press tour.  We can't make this shit up, folks.

WTF-ocrity ensues.

JUST WHY.

The problem with The Vatican Tapes, aside from its shitty script, is that it's a decent little movie, but it just isn't scary at all. Like Lifetime Movie of The Week type of not scary. There were plenty of scenes throughout where we could tell that we were supposed to be scared, but if anything, they induced more laughs than they did fear.

It was all too tame and watered-down to be intense, which I suppose was by design, because they needed a PG-13 rating or something.

LOTS OF POTENTIAL HERE, NONE OF WHICH WAS REACHED.

Despite having very little to work with script-wise, Olivia Taylor Dudley was pretty solid in the lead role of the possessed girl. If she can get herself in some better movies, she's got a decent career ahead of her. She actually looked like a young Patricia Arquette at times in this one, which is a good thing in our book, and it made us think of Stigmata, which is a far superior possession movie.

While this movie just didn't work for us on most levels, we do have to say that we liked the ending a lot. Too bad they didn't spend more time exploring the place where the story ended up, instead of about 80% of what came before it.

YEAH, US TOO.

Far too bland, predictable, familiar, and un-scary for us to take it at all seriously, The Vatican Tapes was a misfire on nearly every level. You should really wait until it hits Netflix if you want to give it a go, because paying to see it will only send filmmakers a message that this kind of shit is alright.

Which it most certainly is not.

D+

The Vatican Tapes is available now on Blu-ray, DVD, and VOD.

At least the movie featured Olivia Taylor Dudley, Alison Lohman, and Kathleen Robertson, which made it fairly tolerable. Kinda.

VOD Review: Landmine Goes Click (2015)

"This one sure threw us for a loop."

*There were a handful of movies in 2015 that we wanted to review, but didn't get to, so we're just going to go ahead and give them the Quick Review treatment now. We'll keep it short and sweet.

A solid Indie Thriller, Landmine Goes Click suffers from exactly what makes it such a compelling watch: its improbable and crazy paradigm shift.

It mostly worked, and then kinda didn't, but at the very least, this movie shook up Genre conventions and gave us something very different to chew on and digest. That's something at least.

*Beware, there are spoilers below!

Three American tourists -Daniel, Alicia, and Chris- are hiking through the rural backwoods of Georgia (in Russia, not the U.S. State), when Chris steps on a landmine, which makes it go click. If he steps off of the landmine, it will go boom, and he will explode into a thousand little pieces, so he decides not to move, or even breathe all that much.

"HEY, ASSHOLES, CUT THE ROMANCE, I'M STANDING ON A LANDMINE HERE!"

As bad as the situation is, things get worse when a skeevy Georgian local named Ilya comes along (with massive hunting dog and rifle in tow), and proceeds to terrorize the group of friends, both mentally and sexually.

THEY SURE ARE FRIENDLY OVER THERE IN GEORGIA.

Now, there's a lot more that happens in between all of that, but to break it all down here would spoil things for you, and what's the point of watching something if it's already been spoiled for you? What we will say is that there's a lot of rape and sexual abuse that goes on throughout, and things take a 180 degree turn towards the end, where even more fucked up things happen.

It's a twisted little movie, to say the least.

DUDE, SHE'S LIKE 16. WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU?

Landmine Goes Click began with an interesting premise, and started out strong, firmly holding our attention, but then it devolved into something... quite unexpected. There's a plot twist that occurs about an hour in that changes the movie in a way that still has us a bit vexed; we expected the whole thing to be an intense Survival Thriller, which it was for its first hour, and it was a bit of a surprise to see it switch gears to flat out Revenge for its closing act.

It was a pretty intense and engaging watch overall though.

THIS PICTURE LEAVES ME AT A LOSS FOR WITTY COMMENTARY.

Now, that plot twist, and the way that it's executed, may well be what made the movie so good in some people's eyes, and we can see that; revenge was coming, and it was well-warranted. The way that said revenge was carried out though didn't make much sense to us.

***BEWARE ENDING SPOILERS!!!***
After what Ilya did to Alicia, it felt perfectly natural for Chris to seek the guy out, and want him dead. Why Ilya left him alive is beyond us (he should have killed them both, and been done with it), but he was alive, and therefore, deserved his revenge. Why Chris took that revenge on the guy's wife and daughter though... Sure, he wanted Ilya to feel as terrified and helpless as he had made him feel earlier, but Russian roulette? And he didn't once say "Hey, your scumbag husband raped and killed someone I love, so I'm here to kill him for it." No, he got all clever with things, and made it into a complicated mess where he ended up becoming as much of a scumbag as Ilya was.

And while we're in spoiler territory... the whole thing with his friend setting up such an elaborate ruse with the landmine just felt silly.
***END OF SPOILERS***

LOVE TRIANGLES NEVER END WELL.

The movie also drags a bit in the early going, in which not a lot happens other than talking. Once things do pick up with the introduction of Ilya, the movie becomes one long, drawn-out sexual assault, so it may be a tough watch for some people.

PAVEL CRAWLED ALONG WITH HER, DETERMINED TO NOT LET THAT HUMAN BITCH STEAL HIS BEST MOVE.

Hell hath no fury like a loving boyfriend cucked. Also,if you want to go hiking somewhere, choose anywhere but Russia.

IT IS BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY THOUGH...

Landmine Goes Click is a solid Survival/Revenge Thriller that contains plenty of intense and uncomfortable material, and a shocking end that left us saying "damn!" The problem is that so many of the plot elements, and the way that they developed, felt wrong and untrue, that it didn't quite affect us like it could have.

It's a good movie (if flawed), and since it's available to stream for free (if you are an Amazon Prime member), it's definitely worthy of 90-minutes of your time. *If you're not already a member, then join HERE. It's totally worth it.

C

Landmine Goes Click is available now on VOD.

Spencer Locke can make our landmine go click any day.