Season of the Witch (2011)

Season of the Witch is a 2011 American fantasy adventure film starring Nicolas Cage and Ron Perlman and directed by Dominic Sena with extensive uncredited reshoots by Brett Ratner. Cage stars with Ron Perlman as Teutonic Knights, who return from the Crusades to find their fatherland ruined by the Black Death. Two church elders accuse a girl (Claire Foy) of being a witch and being responsible for the destruction, and they command the two knights to transport the girl to a monastery so the monks there can lift her curse from the land. The film draws inspiration from the 1957 film The Seventh Seal. It reunited Sena and Cage after they worked together on Gone in 60 Seconds.

Development on the film began in 2000 when the spec script by screenwriter Bragi F. Schut was purchased by MGM. The project moved from MGM to Columbia Pictures to Relativity Media, where the film was finally produced by Charles Roven and Alex Gartner. Filming took place primarily in Austria, Hungary and Croatia. Season of the Witch was released on January 7, 2011 in the United States, Canada and several other territories. The film received negative reviews but was a moderate box office success.

Synopsis

In Villach in the 13th century, three women are accused of witchcraft by a priest. While one claims to be a witch through persuasion from the church, one doesn't deny it and curses the priest. He orders them hanged and drowned. That done, he urges the guards to pull them back up for a ritual to make sure the so-called witches never come back to life. The guards refuse, claiming they are dead enough. The priest returns late at night to perform the ritual. The third corpse takes on a demonic appearance and kills the priest.

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