The Last Witch Hunter

Vin Diesel is a huge fan of Dungeons & Dragons and the fantasy genre. The Last Witch Hunter is an homage to them both, and while Diesel’s passion for the film is clear, its execution is much more muddled.

Kaulder (Vin DIesel) has spent centuries hunting witches after the Witch Queen cursed him with immortality right as he killed her. With the help of Father Dolan (Michael Caine), a member of a secret sect in charge of assisting him, Kaulder helps keep the balance between witches and humans in check. That balance becomes strained when a high level witch starts using black magic in an effort to resurrect the Witch Queen and unleash a black plague that will wipe out all of humanity.

The best thing The Last Witch Hunter has going for it is that it looks pretty, at times. Kaulder is over 800 years old and the best scenes of the film take place in the past when he is fighting the Witch Queen for the first time. The whole Viking-era aesthetic looks great, but all of that is lost when the story transitions to present day New York. It just doesn’t look the same.

The Last Witch Hunter has some good ideas, but fails to successfully achieve them. The action is extremely chaotic and favors sporadic close-up shots that are difficult to follow. The story also fails to impress as it simply goes through the motions of Kaulder trying to prevent the resurrection of the Witch Queen. In order to do so, he teams up with a witch named Chloe (Rose Leslie) who uses her powers as a dreamwalker to help him see the truth. She’s a rather generic partner, whose purpose is meant to bring more humanity to Kaulder but ends up being in the way for the majority of the film. There’s also an unnecessary twist towards the end that feels tacked on at the last minute. In the end, the film simply feels like it’s going through the motions of your stereotypical action movie.

As much of an action star Vin Diesel is, his performance isn’t enough to establish The Last Witch Hunter as anything more than a generic film. It’s not horrible, but it’s not great either. It simply hangs somewhere in between.