The Last Witch Hunter (2015)

User Review

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  TheMovieDiorama

  4 / 10

  The Last Witch Hunter offers a plague of fantastical visual effects yet eternally damns all to boredom. If you told me that Vin Diesel would be cast as a witch slayer who is cursed with eternal life, I would've joked that his other 'Fast & Furious' family member Dwayne Johnson was cast as a CGI scorpion monstrosity. Oh, wait a minute...! Anyway, back to the witch hunt, fantasy adventures are my bread and butter with a light spreading of fantastical flavoursome jam. But only when the adventure is thrilling, characters are infectiously entertaining and the medium of film is put to maximum usage. This disposable start to a forced franchise succumbs to the symptom that most modern fantasy flicks contain. Emptiness. We see a witch hunter, the last apparently (who knew!), tasked in saving the world from the Witch Queen who has recently been resurrected.
  
  Incoming special effects, visualised environments and Diesel's deep mumbling voice. The first two factors are well executed, with many creatures and dream-like worlds looking surprisingly realistic exhuming that magical quality. The world building is thick with much of the dialogue cementing the foundations of the lore. Order of the Axe and Cross, Dolans and the Witch Council. This inevitably leaves no room for, yes you guessed it, character development.
  
  Kaulder is emotionless thanks to Diesel's terrible miscasting. His niche charm just does not work for this genre, in my opinion. He is accompanied by a witch named Chloe, performed by Leslie who singlehandedly uses her wit and comedic execution to save the film, who conveniently has a ridiculous amount of spells and abilities to save Kaulder whenever he is in peril such as dream-walking. Essentially negating any thrills. Caine is quickly replaced by Wood as the friendly neighbourhood priest who only exists for a specific plot point in the third act, which was abhorrently unnecessary.
  
  Suffice to say I wanted this to be good. The time is right for a new fantasy franchise to hit our screens, sadly this is not the one. The Last Witch Hunter has rapidly hunted its last witch.

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