VIN DIESEL IN THE LAST WITCH HUNTER

year: 2015 cast: Vin Diesel, Michael Caine, Elijah Wood Director: Breck Eisner

There's just so much CGI that kills suspense, and makes any and all evil adversaries look somewhat similar after a while. A kind of demonic dark-red vegetation growing icky tentacles, and always whispering, or hissing, or both... A cinematic villainous plague!

During this horror adventure involving modern Gothic witches considered normal since a witch hunter, Kaulder, was, long ago, granted an eternal chore to keep them from being their original nasty selves, is a moment when Michael Caine's wise old priest stares out at a New York building and sees what happened in GHOSTBUSTERS when, after the power's shut off, a mad dash of spirits rush up into the skyline: the same exact scene but with much less color.

At this point we're practically finished with a movie that never let's us know the characters well enough to either boo at or root for. Like young priest/sidekick Elijah Wood in an ultimately wasted role. The witches aren't very distinguished from each other... other than being gorgeous until some reveal their genuinely ancient, crumbling selves: And Vin Diesel's muscular tough guy seems like a legitimate witch ass kicker (he's Vin Diesel and can beat up anyone, right?) yet sporadic dreams of his wife and child in a rural medieval meadow provide a sparse backstory that anyone not familiar with whatever source THE LAST WITCH HUNTER derived will be completely in the dark, waiting for this mediocre time-filler... with a few neat battles for action flick fans to enjoy... to finally conclude. And although the first twenty minutes does attempt to slowly maintain itself into a story we can all follow, once the action starts, everything just sort of frantically blends together.

RATING: **1/2