What is that smell?
That would be you.
In this bizarre low-budget action-adventure-fantasy-horror-period movie, Nicolas Cage and Ron Perlman play as Medieval knights returned from the Crusades, disillusioned and weary with the years of violence they’ve experienced. Now they’re tasked with escorting a young girl to a remote abbey where she is to be tried for witchcraft. There’s a great movie in this idea about a weary knight struggling with the loss of his faith, forced to confront the cruelties of the Church, but also, perhaps, true spiritual evil. This is not that movie. This is an often silly, incredibly cheap movie that is too resolutely grim to ever be as much fun as it could be. Because there’s also an opportunity here to just really go over the top and make a real throwback to the budget horror movies of decades past and have a really fun romp, even a “so-bad-it’s-good” movie. But it’s not that movie either, unfortunately.
Cage is very restrained here. He’s not really allowed the opportunity, nor does he make one, to really become unhinged, so the movie doesn’t have the manic energy that he usually brings to movies that would otherwise be dull. He does, it must be said, not work in a period piece. Perlman is, as he always is, entertaining and his cynical attitude often seems like winking at the audience, but he’s not given enough to do. Claire Foy, in her feature film debut, is actually darn good as the girl/possible witch. It’s not a subtle performance, but it’s entertaining. She’s either tremulously huddled in the corner as the vulnerable waif or creepily smiling out from behind her hair like she just dropped in from The Ring. No spoilers, but she’s both the most interesting character and the best performance in the film. Stephen Campbell Moore is on hand as a fanatical priest and he’s actually trying to give a serious performance. Stephen Graham appears as thief or a rogue or a scoundrel or something and he’s absolutely dreadful; I swear he’s genuinely going for a Bronx accent. And, yes, they roped Christopher Lee into this for a one-scene cameo as a Cardinal stricken with the Black Plague, which mostly manifests as a tumor on the side of his head that is basically the size of his head. The tumor, I really have to point out, is CGI, not practical make-up.
Oh, yes, let’s get to the CGI which is mostly confined to pretty bad greenscreen work, especially during the opening montage of the Crusades. Oh, that opening montage where there’s like ten guys in armor in front of a green screen with an army of thousands on it? Shot by an uncredited Brett Ratner. And when the guy who proudly put his name on X-Men: The Last Stand is like, “Nah, I don’t need the credit on this,” that’s a red flag. Anyway, the movie does get into some pretty intense CGI in the last fifteen to twenty minutes and, man oh man, it is really bad. Honestly, it didn’t bother me though because having an actual winged green demon strutting around in pretty cheap-looking CGI is actually more in line with the fun version of this movie that I kind of wish we’d gotten. Oh, spoiler, I guess. Who cares? Don’t watch this. 1 ½ stars.
tl;dr – medieval malarky features a couple of game performances, though not from Nicolas Cage; otherwise, this one’s eminently skippable. 1 ½ stars.