The Last Witch Hunter Review Roundup: Did Critics Like the Vin Diesel Film?

The movie also stars Game of Thrones' Rose Leslie, Elijah Wood and Michael Caine

By Corinne Heller Oct 23, 2015 5:21 PMTags
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Vin Diesel returns to badass hero mode once again in The Last Witch Hunter, a supernatural action and fantasy movie which sees him playing an 800-year-old immortal witch hunter in New York City.

The actor's role, Kaulder, was inspired by a Dungeons & Dragons game character he used to play when he was younger.

Also starring is Scottish actress Rose Leslie, who repeatedly told Jon Snow in Game of Thrones that he "knows nothing" and also played Gwen in Downton Abbey. In The Last Witch Hunter, she portrays a good witch named Chloe who helps Kaulder.

The movie also stars Elijah Wood and Michael Caine. The Last Witch Hunter was released on Friday.

Check out what five critics said about the movie.

1. ComingSoon.net's Joshua Starnes gives the film a score of five out of 10.

"The Last Witch Hunter isn't terrible by any stretch of the imagination and there are moments when it overcomes its worst instincts to give a glimpse of the movie the filmmakers were probably trying to make," he says. "Diesel can hold a screen and he is completely comfortable with Kaulder's informed outlook of urbanity and competence and odd humanism."

"But there's a balance which must be found to make one of these things work, or lacking that at least either the fantasy or character elements must shine through," he writes. "When both sides fail...the basic skeleton of the story is at obvious odds with itself and not all of the charismatic actors in the world will keep the outcome from feeling like it lasts forever."

2. Newsday's Rafer Guzman gives The Last Witch Hunter 2.5 out of four stars.

"The dependable Diesel and a fine cast keep this hokey action flick mostly entertaining," he writes.

"Chloe, a hip, street-smart witch, is the kind of character whose sassiness usually lands with a thud in movies of this sort, but Rose Leslie...plays her with intelligence and moxie," he writes. "Rounded out by Elijah Wood and Michael Caine as Kaulder's priestly valets, plus a memorable Dawn Olivieri as a hookah-puffing femme fatale, the spirited cast keeps this movie entertaining despite its overly familiar feel."

3. The Chicago Sun-TimesRichard Roeper gives The Last Witch Hunter 0.5 out of four stars and includes some snark in his review.

"How did Nicolas Cage avoid this one?" he writes.

"The Last Witch Hunter does not work as campy escapism or as a guilty pleasure or as one of those movies so unintentionally funny you have to admit you were entertained from the hokey prelude through a finale that is such an obvious grab for a sequel one of the characters might as well have said, 'I feel like there's another chapter in this story!'" he says. "It's just deadly and dreadful, loud and obnoxious, convoluted and irritating, horrible and dumb." 

4. Mashable's Jordan Hoffman says, "Vin Diesel wins for Nerdiest Movie of the Year."

"There's a surprisingly playful quality in The Last Witch Hunter, and the unveiling of the secret world around us is something like a mix of Men in Black and John Wick," the critic writes. "Fans of Game of Thrones will love this because it's like all of the silly parts without any of the rigorous thinking."

5. Time Out London's Tom Huddleston gives The Last Witch Hunter one out of five stars, calling it a "sausage-faced, gender-flipped Buffy the Vampire Slayer."

"What an ugly, idiotic mess this is," he writes.

"The performances are particularly rotten: we expect Vin to wobble about like a half-inflated penis balloon with a face scrawled on it, but Caine and Elijah Wood (playing his fellow priest) should know better; and the cut-glass-posh Leslie is simply unbearable—picture Princess Beatrice on a gap year working in a Manhattan goth bar," he says. "A hideous electro mangling of the Stones' 'Paint It Black' over the closing credits adds insult to injury. But hey, at least that means it's over."