Here's the thing about contemporary bad movies. They're as likely to look FAN-tastic as good movies. Think about this for a second: when someone tells me that they like a movie because it has good special effects these days, I have to take that with a grain of salt, because almost ALL movies that make it to the multiplexes have good special effects. Ditto for production design and overall film craft. We are living in the golden age of film as a burnished ornament. We are living in the golden age of the polished turd.
I didn't really know what to expect of Season of the Witch (2011, directed by Dominic Sena). For the most part, it looked like a train wreck, an ill-advised medieval horror movie that was so bad that it had been more or less orphaned by its distributor. Director Dominic Sena was fired from the film after poor audience reactions and the film was "doctored" by studio hack Bret Ratner. Nicolas Cage, for his part, is taking anything that comes along to forestall the wolf at the door. His financial problems have been well documented in the press. This is another movie for which he is probably ill-suited. Lionsgate shelved the film in 2010, and it ended up being released by Relativity Media, the outfit that funded the film. This is their first dip into film distribution. Also, the reviews have been pretty dismal. What did I expect? A polished turd, of course. But then someone in my social networks posted the following image of Christopher Lee, and I knew that, regardless, I was going to plunk down my money to see it. In the theater.
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