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The Last Witch Hunter | 2015 | PG-13 | - 2.7.3
Set in modern times, a cult of angry witches and warlocks plans to release the Black Death upon the world. Cursed with immortal life by a 13th century witch queen (Israel Baldecañas), her destroyer (Vin Diesel) has lived on, the only survivor of the witch hunter armies, and he pursues the current cult only to learn that witches have resurrected the queen and plan to eliminate humanity. Also with Rose Leslie, Elijah Wood, Michael Caine, Rena Owen, Julia Englebrecht, Joseph Gilgun, Michael Halsey, Ólafur Darri Ólafsson, Isaach De Bankolé, Lotte Verbeek and Kurt Angle. Directed by Breck Eisner. Several lines of dialogue are in a foreign language without translation. [1:46]
SEX/NUDITY 2 - Men appear briefly, shirtless and covered with mud in a dimly lit scene and three flashbacks; some of the men wear loincloths. A woman wears a deeply cut sleeveless blouse that exposes a tattooed butterfly above significant cleavage. A woman wears a sleeveless leather top, snug tights and tall boots. Two women wearing long gowns revealing moderate cleavage. A few women in a club wear V-necked blouses that expose moderate cleavage. A few women have cutouts in the backs of their blouses or dresses. A woman, shown from the hips and up, wears a dress cut to below the navel, revealing some cleavage. Women in a back room are shown applying makeup and one woman sits in profile; we see her bra and slight cleavage.
► A husband and his wife kiss for several seconds. A husband kneels and kisses his wife's huge pregnant belly through her dress and we later see him hold a baby wrapped in blankets.
► A man smiles at a female flight attendant on a plane and that night she exits the elevator of his hotel, smiling, and walks out with her rolling suitcase (sex is implied). A man and woman smile at each other and she touches his hand briefly. A woman drives a man away in his car as they smile at each other. A man goes to another man's hotel room and says he has noticed the parade of flight attendants passing out of the room over the years (sex implied); the first man laughs.
VIOLENCE/GORE 7 - A warrior enters a tree-like structure made of sticks and vines and encounters a witch queen covered with mud, dirt, worms, and crawling bugs (her eyes are yellow and her teeth are dirty and sharp) as she shouts in a supernatural voice that the human must die, then strikes the warrior and he falls; the warrior is covered in buzzing insects and convulses as wasps swarm out of his mouth and he dies as another man buries an axe blade in the witch's chest and she screams (in close-up, we see silvery blood flow down a sword blade and off-screen); an illusion of a little girl turns into a pile of sticks, bones and some gore, crawling with insects as a man falls down a tunnel of sticks and branches and lands on the ground where thick vines coil and entangle him and catch fire as a witch queen says that he must perish and he impales her on a short tree branch, stabs her through with a flaming sword, and then she stabs him in the chest with her hand and arm, which glow with electricity and begin to look like cracked papier-mâché before she dies and falls apart into embers and ashes.
► A worm- and bug-covered witch queen swings a flaming sword at a man in a dark dungeon and he dumps a vial of liquid light that ignites his sword, and then stabs her; her hand becomes bloody as they slash each other and black butterflies and wasps rise in a swarm from her body when she laughs maniacally and she falls to all fours on the floor; a priest fires a handgun at the swordsman, missing, and the queen grabs a woman's head, showing her a vision of an abandoned city with grass-filled streets then levitates the priest and swarms him with black, bloody wasps, dropping him to die on the floor, his vacant, glassy eyes staring at the camera; the queen rises into the air and surrounds herself with black vines and some dead featureless bodies as the swordsman throws his flaming weapon through her chest and she explodes and swarms of wasps outside in the city drop dead below the frame.
► Witch hunting warriors confront a huge black, leafless witch tree made of twisting limbs, sticks, and vines and inside they find tunnels of sticks and vines, along with a red-glowing pod of sticks and meshed vines hanging from a branch; they see the large skull of a deer and an explosion erupts in tall flames and male savages appear and attack, but witch hunters stab them with knives and swords that first erupt into flames and then pierce through the chests of the savages with the blades showing sticking out through their backs; savages scream into the camera with yellow eyes and sharp teeth.
► A child changes into a man who stabs another man in the hand (the bloody wound heals itself), and the wounded man slams the assailant into a wall twice and pulls him off-screen as the camera cuts to a hallway, where a priest head-butts the assailant and takes him into a dungeon below a church to stand before a witch council.
► A man lies back in a chair, exhales freezing breath and snow begins to fall as he has a vision; he sees a flashback of himself with witch hunters in the 13th century and revisits a witch queen's death and sees her burnt corpse glowing and falling to embers. A man sees a vision that shows that a witch hunter is a warlock who kept a dead witch's heart, which is black and vine covered, still beating; the man having the vision looks horrified and he awakens to find that he has been chained to a floor; glass doors of cabinets around the room smash and shatter loudly and the chained man squeezes his hand out of a handcuff (we see the hand is crushed, red and purple, but heals itself instantly) and the man beats the warlock with a long club, but the warlock throws him into a cabinet twice, then a woman appears and takes out a dagger as the warlock blows golden dust that ignites the building in large flames and the first man chokes the woman, who blows white dust in his face to stop the illusion of her as a witch with worms and insects on her muddy face and the warlock says the man will die, then he is covered in vines and disappears through the wooden floor and outside, and the vines retract into a hole in a brick wall that heals itself (the man and the woman escape).
► A warlock pushes a blind magician into a dark area by a railroad bridge at night, breaking open a wooden box of vials of magic powders; the blind man screams and swarms of moths fly out of the box. A warlock puts a black heart into another man's chest and encases him in tangles of thick vines that lock him onto a big, black, leafless tree and we see a knife penetrating the man's hand, pinning him in place; another man drives up and exits his car with a handgun and he uncovers the blind man's face from vines on a tree and says that he should have killed the blind man and everyone like him (people with supernatural powers) as the blind man's voice becomes the echoing voice of a witch and a woman appears and blows flames at the man with the gun, a warlock fires a shotgun at the handgun man and misses, disappearing when the second man hits him in the chest with a knife throw; an arm extends from the tree vines and its hand enters the handgun man's chest, glowing with electrical patterns and a witch queen breaks out of the tree, covered in worms, swarming winged insects, and small crawling bugs; she slams the handgun man onto a length of rebar extending from a concrete wall (the bloodless wound heals instantly) and the handgun man picks up a shotgun, fires at the witch who disappears and we see that he has five long red gashes on his cheek for a few minutes, until they disappear and he is later shown with blood running from an eyebrow wound. A swordsman looks at the glowing burnt body of a witch and removes her beating black heart and raises his sword to destroy it.
► In a vision, a woman kicks a man hard in the stomach, throwing him backwards, then stabs him in the stomach, but does no damage; the man awakens and throws a dagger at another woman's hand in which is a knife, which falls as she grimaces and he pulls a pendant and necklace from a third woman's neck and she grimaces in pain as he drops the pendant stone into a glass of water bringing the woman in his vision into real time where she pulls the stone out of the water, drops it, and steps on it to crush it; the other woman groans and sheds skin as ashes and dust, becoming an old hag and cursing.
► Many flowers bloom instantly on a long hanging plant in a window and at night, the window is full of hanging baskets and lights, but the lights explode, shattering some glass, and the power goes out in the room as a woman gasps but is unharmed; writhing vines appear from the floor and pull her into it and a black vortex, where her skin cracks like old paper and she screams as the camera cuts to her waking and sitting up suddenly in a bed from a dream. A woman lays out a line of tarot cards and sentences a man to prison as he mutters foreign words and a large metal insect comes to life and behind it, a large creature made of sticks and vines opens its mouth to show a pit of fire below three skulls on its head and it swallows the man, walks through iron doors, and the doors slam shut. A woman gasps as a cat rushes past her from a doorway and inside the building is a large greenhouse that the woman and a man walk through and find another woman lying on the ground, dead and with blood having streamed down a corner of her mouth and chin.
► A man in a basement looks at a black wall fresco that features many small skeletons wearing cloaks and he takes a woman's hand and places it on his chest, causing him to envision his wife and young daughter from centuries ago; the man then appears in a field with two wooden crosses marking their graves, and he sees himself and a witch queen burned black and glowing with embers, then he sees a man pull a sword out of the witch and sees a beating black heart covered in vines on the end of the sword and he sees and hears his burned self as he screams; he awakens from the vision and walks upstairs to a church, where he slams a priest against a wall and shouts at him.
► A huge black leafless tree grows throughout a church sanctuary, puncturing the walls as a man with a sword, a man with a handgun and a woman with a dagger enter and the swordsman dumps a vial of white liquid light onto a wall and beats the wall with the sword until a man falls out from where he was imprisoned, large metal insects and a huge creature made out of sticks and vines awaken and the woman enters the dreams of the released man and fights with him as he chokes her until she kicks him into a long tunnel of sticks and vines that ends in a fiery pit and she awakens; the swordsman uses a shotgun blast to break apart the huge creature, it reconstructs itself, he rides on its back until he stabs it with his sword and it breaks apart, tries to get up, but falls into pieces, dead, then he crushes the metal insect in his hand.
► In a bakery kitchen, a close-up features hands pouring maggots into cupcake mix as a blind man with milky eyes releases a large cloud of blue and monarch butterflies and outside a child finds a tree full of gummy bears; grabbing handfuls of them, he sees the tree turn into an old, leafless chestnut tree and the candy turns to rotting nut pods. A man squeezes a dead bee out of the gray skin of the neck of a dead priest lying on a bed and holds a candle to the corpse's nose as breath escapes. A dead priest revives slowly. In a club, we see two rows of women applying makeup and one mirror image is a witch's face with gray skin and skull-like appearance. A wasp crawls under a windowsill and a priest smashes it with a holy book.
► In three visions, a huge, dead black tree fills the screen in the background at the end of a street overgrown with tall grass (rusted cars sit parked at the sides of the street and buildings are crumbling); during the visions but in real time, a swarm of loudly buzzing black wasps flies out of a tall cathedral and blackens the skies.
► A priest and a man enter an elderly priest's office to find it trashed with furniture broken; the man breathes on a window and sees an axe and cross mandala, he drops white powder on the floor to reveal a burning pentagram, a large bookcase crashes and words in a foreign language burn themselves into a wall as windows implode with shattering glass and loud crashes, but no one is hurt.
► A priest stands behind the coffin of an elderly priest in a sanctuary with a few other priests as he bares his forearm and grimaces as he receives a brand of a mandala containing an axe and a cross. A man finds bloodstains over certain words in a book and, after he sees red cuts on a dead man's forefinger, reads all of the stained words again to find that a witch plans to unleash the Black Death on humanity.
► A man breathes onto an airplane window and sees a mandala symbol form before a fierce storm tosses the plane with turbulence and oxygen masks descend; he walks to a teen girl and touches her hand, which glows, he pours a glass of water into the lap of a man next to her and he leaves his seat so the first man sits and demands to have it; the girl gives the man a packet of ancient runes, onto which he pours a white powder, electricity sparks and the storm ends. In two scenes, we see a sports car speed through a street and hear screeching tires.
► A teen girl says to a man, "You're gonna kill me" and he replies, "I'm trying to keep you from killing yourself." A man tells a priest that thousands of dead slaves were found when a cathedral was constructed, but workers buried them under the building.
► A gunroom in a hotel suite is a small room with thick walls and many rows of handguns; we also see knives and a long sword as well as magic powders in bottles. In a scene and three flashbacks, 13th century fur-wearing witch hunting warriors in a snowstorm carry axes, clubs, long staffs, a few torches, a cross on a long handle and Bibles as they hunt witches. A medieval priest paints the sign of the cross on a warrior's forehead in ashes.
LANGUAGE 3 - 3 scatological terms, 4 mild obscenities, name-calling (disgrace, ugly, stuck pig, bad rock band from the 80s), exclamations (I swear to you), 4 religious exclamations (My God, In The Name Of The Father, Our Father, Almighty).
SUBSTANCE USE - A woman smokes a hookah in her home and adds fresh herbs to the top of it before smoking again and blowing puffs of white smoke into a man's face causing him to dream of past years of his life and small spherical glass containers send blue electric waves up into the air in a club to form intricate cloud patterns (they do not seem to be drugged), a café office holds several medical cabinets with glass windows that show bottles of liquids and powders, a wooden case holds vials of white powders, a gunroom has a shelf full of white powders, and a woman injects green liquid memory potion into a maraschino cherry in a café and a man swallows it and recalls his earlier years of life. A female flight attendant carries a tray of drinks through an airplane aisle, the back bar of a cafe holds several bottles of brightly colored liquors or potions, a man pours whiskey in his room for a friend and himself and they both drink, a wine bottle and two partially filled glasses of red wine are seen on a table, a bottle of whiskey and an empty glass are shown on a floor beside a couch, a woman pours a drink and puts it down before pouring a cup of coffee (she does not drink either beverage), and a man revives from a near-death state and another man gives him a small glass of amber liquid to swallow (we do not hear what the liquid is).
DISCUSSION TOPICS - Fantasy, witches, curses, heroes, villains, murder, loss, betrayal, grief, having a mission, courage, hope, sacrifice, friendship, love, trust, justice.
MESSAGE - One can have family and friends, even if one has an important mission in life.
CAVEATS
Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.
We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.
Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated, Special, Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.
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