Seventh Son ~ review

Seventh Son is a fantasy movie based on the book, The Spook's Apprentice, by Joseph Delaney. Starred Ben Barnes, Jeff Bridges, Julianne Moore, Alicia Vikander, Olivia Williams and Djimon Hounsou, this Sergei Bodrov-directed film is another attempt by movie studios to make a movie franchise out of a book series. I'm assuming here, of course, since The Spook's Apprentice is the first book in the The Wardstone Chronicles series, which so far already has more than 10 books, the studio might want to consider a continuity in the movie as well, right? If everything goes well, then I bet they would make a sequel or two out of it. But is this movie even good enough to warrant a sequel?

Before we go any further, let me warn you that this review might have few spoilers. I would try my best to avoid major spoilers regarding the plot but if you consider even the slightest hint on the plot, characters or anything at all to be spoilers, then I would suggest you leave this post and read another one. You've been warned! For those who wish to continue with my review, you may proceed. ;-)


So what is this movie about? Seventh Son tells a story about a young man named Thomas Ward who had been apprenticed to the local spook (who deals with the supernatural), John Gregory, to become his successor, and also because they had to defeat Mother Malkin, a powerful witch who had escaped imprisonment. Story-wise, I was not really into it. Sure, the movie had quite an amazing cast, great visual effects, and some really cool action sequences, but somehow it was not engaging enough. It was not as entertaining as it could have been, and since the movie is loosely based on the book, I believe the writers behind this movie might have missed some important elements that made the book popular in the first place. How did I know that it was not faithfully adapted from its source material? I saw the book in the bookstore the other day and it stated there something like "The book that inspired the movie Seventh Son". "Inspired" is the key word here, so I'm assuming it must have only been loosely based from the book.

I think the most glaring weakness that this movie has is a weak team of villains. The character design for them were really great with each of them looked menacing and intimidating, but the story doesn't help in developing them individually and they just become another obstacles for the main protagonists to overcome. Julianne Moore as Mother Malkin was good as the main villain but even her character were poorly developed and there's nothing more she could give for her underdeveloped character. The protagonists on the other hand, Ben Barnes as Thomas Ward and Jeff Bridges as John Gregory, were great. I really like Ben Barnes a lot, he brought charisma to his character and his interaction with Jeff Bridges's character were some of the great thing about this movie.

What about the visuals? Personally, I feel that the world that the story was set in was not properly developed but Seventh Son is still a beautiful movie to look at; it has quite a few nice settings, great character design for the villains (as I mentioned before) and also great visual effects. The last one is what impressed me the most because the movie doesn't look like a big-budget movie but it still packed with cool special effects that are pretty nice to look at. Despite having a weak story, these special effects would at least distract audiences with its magic...well, let's just hope it would. It was good to see such hard work had been put to make all these supernatural and fantastical beings come to life, at least the movie managed to achieve that.

Eventhough the story was not as entertaining as it could have been, I still believe that the movie has potential. All they need to do is build up a proper world for the franchise and developed the characters more. I know the casts and crew had been working hard for this movie but if only it has a strong story, the movie would have been better.

I give Seventh Son 6.5/10.

Images sourced from the movie official website.