THe LasT WiTCH HunTer

Vin Diesel rolls a one

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12A | 106 minutes

Director Breck eisner

Cast Vin diesel, Michael Caine, Elijah

Wood, Rose Leslie, Rena Owen

Vin Diesel makes his first foray into fantasy filmmaking with The Last Witch Hunter, a film spawned from his love of Dungeons & Dragons. Given the end result, you rather wish Diesel was into Monopoly, Cluedo or Snakes & Ladders.

Directed by Breck Eisner, who last pitched up with the 2010 remake of George Romero’s The Crazies, The Last Witch Hunter is a perfunctory scare-fest drowning in digital effects but entirely lacking in charisma. Diesel plays Kaulder, a medieval warrior cursed with immortality just as he vanquishes the pestilencespreading Witch Queen.

Eight hundred years later, we’re in modern-day New York, where Kaulder now spends his spare time seducing air hostesses. He’s also employed by a Witch Counsel to hunt down naughty necromancers who practice dark magic. When Kaulder’s priestadvisor (Michael Caine) is left spell-stricken, he follows a trail that eventually suggests a plot to resurrect the Witch Queen. Along for the ride is Caine’s wellmeaning replacement (Elijah Wood) and a good witch named Chloe (Game Of Thrones’ Rose Leslie), who spends her days running a gothy arts club.

As the story plods along, Eisner fills the screen with icky visuals, but rarely does anything get under the skin. Some ideas are promising, like a bakery feeding its patrons with maggot-riddled cakes, but never really developed. Dialogue is as wooden as a box of crucifixes, and the performances, bar a lively turn from Misfits/This Is England’s Joe Gilgun, are largely moribund. Let us prey this is a one-off. James Mottram

Screenwriter Cory Goodman was inspired by talking to Diesel about his D&D character, Melkor – a name from The Silmarillion.