Nicholas Cage can sure ruin a scary movie. But then again, so can a really stupid, pointless plot. If you were excited at all about seeing Season of the Witch, don’t bother—it’s even worse than Wicker Man. (Spoilers ahead.)

The film takes place somewhere in the U.K. but there’s no accent to be found; in fact, one of the characters speaks with a Brooklyn accent. A Brooklyn accent! In England (or wherever)! How novel (note my sarcasm). The entire plot is centered around taking a supposed witch, who has been tortured into a confession, to a group of monks who may dispel her powers and cure the plague.

A couple of rogue ex-Crusaders who “still serve God but not the Church” (of course, we later learn that they really aren’t that into God, but having their sins—especially in adultery and thievery—absolved, as I’m sure many knights were promised during the time) are imprisoned until they agree to take the witch on the journey, along with a clergyman, a man who’s family all died from the plague, and a thief who can serve as their guide.

There are some great action sequences and special effects, as one might expect. There is a supposed witch in the very first scene, and it looks almost like something out of The Exorcist (which gives away the plot immediately, if you ask me)—but note that it’s not even a quarter as good as The Exorcist. The scene might be the best in the movie. The wolves during one meant to be scary scene are much better than those in Twilight, though that isn’t really saying much. I still say the wolf in The Neverending Story was the best ever done.

There are a couple of nice, tense moments, like a night’s chase in a tomb where the most intriguing character dies, and a strenuous journey across a rickety bridge (in which no one dies, which is stupid), but other than that the movie is pointless and boring. You do wonder, “Is she a witch? Is she not a witch?” throughout the whole damn thing, but it’s more of an annoyance than real tension.

Is the girl a witch? No, she is possessed by a demon, which you pretty much guess at after the first scene of the movie. And she’s a pathetic demon, too, who apparently couldn’t get to the book she’s trying to destroy without the help of mortals, who couldn’t really escape well enough on her own, and who died super, super easily at the hands of Nicholas Cage, who also dies. Almost everyone dies, in fact, except for the girl whose body the demon had inhabited and the young boy who jumped into the so-called quest without permission.

What would have made the whole movie is if, at the end, the girl turned out to be a witch, too. Of course, that would have went against one of the messages of the movie, which I actually liked—that people were murdered in the name of witchcraft for no reason, that women were often blamed for everything from the plague to drought and then sacrificed in a brutal, ritualistic way in the name of Christianity. Still, at least such an ending would’ve been interesting. The film gets a D+ for me, and that’s for special effects alone.