The Seeker: Movie Review

The Seeker movie review

In the vast, daunting shadow of Harry Potter, there are fleets of adolescent-driven fantasy stories out there. Unfortunately, The Seeker shuffles in near the bottom of the pack (though still noticeably above last year’s asinine flop Eragon).

In Seeker, all the ingredients for a successful fantasy flick are present; pesky but ultimately amiable siblings, a strained parental relationship, a potential love interest, and of course newly discovered magical powers which the hero (Will Stanton) must use to combat the forces of evil bent on taking over the world. But unfortunately, it’s all quite bland as a result of poor execution.

In films like this, we can forgive a good deal of sub par acting (of which Seeker has plenty). Often, we can get by with just one or two charismatic, seasoned actors who bring some flare to an inevitably child-flooded cast. Seeker had precisely zero memorable characters. Particularly disappointing was actor Christopher Eccleston (fantastic in 1998’s Elizabeth), who portrayed the dark rider, the main villain of the film. Rather than being, say, ruthless or cunning, he was bizarrely nonchalant and even-tempered, making me wonder if he missed his true calling as vacuum salesman, or possibly a librarian.

But Seeker's biggest problems stem from the directing and the script-writing. As I watched the movie, I kept wondering if director David L. Cunningham was in some kind of rush to finish the project, as he demonstrated no interest in addressing obvious questions we the audience would have. Why is Will so quickly at ease with his new powers (which include time-traveling and the ability to summon fire, amongst other things)? Why don’t his brothers react when they learn that young Will suddenly has the strength to throw them across the room? (“I guess that’s puberty!” Cue laughter from audience?) And this one bugged me too; why bribe a menacing Viking when you can simply scorch him with a fireball?

Cunningham has a knack for draining any potential suspense out of a scene. For instance, a witch working for the dark rider sends minions of cobras after the heroes; not a bad plan, right? Except that as the scene goes on, some of the heroes are literally up to their necks in snakes… which never bother to bite them, making the snakes about as frightening as the ball-pit at Chuck E. Cheese. I understand that it’s a PG movie, but that doesn’t mean you have to feed us Saturday morning cartoon mush.

Even the special effects aren’t very special, especially not for a fantasy flick. (Okay, there are some cool bits involving a smoke-like substance spreading that I found enjoyable to watch.)

On the whole, The Seeker is simply a forgettable film, and will quietly slip away into the vault of other forgettable fantasy movies from the 2000s era. Just as well; bring on the next Harry Potter movie.