Witchville (2010)

Stylish but barely mediocre overall

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

If you like that sort of thing. The production qualities are quite good. The acting is quite good. The music is quite good. The plot is identical to dozens of others. A fantasy medieval kingdom is threatened by takeover by an evil power. Brave heroes and heroines must fight and suffer and die to place the rightful good king back on the throne.This movie offers more in the way of shirtless tied up guys, women with swords, cross-bows, etc.If you like this sort of thing, this is a good version of it.In my opinion on par, and certainly better in terms of acting, than "The Sword and the Sorcerer" or "Kull the Conqueror." The mood is rather consistently dark throughout, which I liked. Not the joke-y-ness of many similar movies.

SyFy movies are a dime a dozen on Saturday nights and this one has a decent and original story line. There are no big blockbuster effects and no deep philosophical plot twists or ideologies. It's simply a sword and sorcery fantasy movie with tidbits of action here and there. Taking it for what it is keeps it in perspective. Those individuals who will think its "apallingly bad" are individuals who can't look past the low budget presentation of the film, although this one isn't that low budget in presentation.The acting is decent for a SyFy movie, the effects are decent, fight scenes decent and setting decent. Again it's not your top of the line straight to the box office film....take it for what it is and stop trying to be the newest critic on the block. We have enough of those.This review is mostly written to counter one of the complaints given in another review. The following may contain spoilers: The story showed Jozefa's (MyAnna Buring) conflict with her mother, the Red Queen from the Red Queen's initial introduction. So the fact she found out the King is her brother along with the fact that she's taken a liking to the King's best friend is the catalyst for her betrayal. Not to mention the King's best friend talking her down.

To begin with, this is a TV movie, therefore you should not have a high expectation about it. However, given that fact, I have seen a low budget action movie which is way better than this one. The actions were very bad; there were some sword fight, but when you look at them, it is exactly the actions that were comparable to a play, not a movie. There were a lot of awkward moment where you can actually see that the actors were waiting for the hit to come slowly..... and then try to deflect them. And of course the details were terrible. The minaret for whatever reason was topped with a cross ? Normally; in this kind of movies, books are made of animal skins, but on this one, it is cheaper to use paper... All in all, my suggestion is not to waste your time on this one. I've given a 2 vote for the effort of the actors, despite a very bad direction they still do reasonably well....

Now let me explain I'm giving this a 6 because when it comes to SyFy Channel movies they usually get a 2-4 yet this one had a bit of something different. While the actor I expected to deliver a good performance was only OK (Luke Goss who was so great in Hellboy II) acting by everyone was good, well not counting Sarah Douglas who was well just campy. Now as for the Movie some interesting action scenes & special F/X kept the movie going though dialogue bogged this movie way down. Not many movies are made of Swords & Sorcery so I had my pop and snacks ready watched the whole thing and found it a nice change of pace. Filmed in China some scenes are beautiful. Lots of visual F/X that play well even if they had budget constraints the director worked with what he had making the most of it. I never heard of him before but apparently he has a cult following with a film called Gene Generation. In an interview I googled he discussed putting himself well into the project determined to make a quality film to that end he did considering his budget and a poor script. A stand out was Eragon's Ed Speelers who has grown up a bit and was really kinda funny in the movie. The movie is a mixed bag (well what syfy movie isn't) at times slow, with odd fight scenes at times fun to watch and enjoyable overall if you can record it and skip the commercials you may like it more...until next week when Syfy will no doubt bless us with yet another Saturday Original flick Nuff Said