Monster bash

Rating: Null/10 (30 October 2015)

Cinema is the art of adopting points of view and this one is unrelentingly poor in that way. Actors walk onto a figurative stage, mouthing off crucial lines about where we are in the plot, everything wooden. The story is trivial anyhow, the characters of the fairytale have grown up to be witch hunters in the vein of the action hero where they sling guns over shoulders and sashay in leather pants.
Which means that it's exactly what it looks like it was going to be from the cover, an action movie adopting the skin of dark fantasy, much like Van Helsing, with medieval backdrops and gnarly monsters.
Choppy so long as there's a plot where we must pretend that characters are facing odds that have some nailbiting significance, they're not really, even when shot or abducted. All that carries about as much gravity and surprise as watching someone pour cookie dough in a mold, biting our nails about whether or not a baked cookie is going to come out on the other end.
On the upside it moves fast and leaves a trail of splatter. When we no longer have to bother with plot, we get a nice showdown up in the woods where a coven of witches is about to perform the climactic ceremony that night. The witches look rotten and ugly and there's a variety of them, the heroes plow and mow through them with guns and knives.