Dull, plodding Harry Potter wannabe is well cast and nicely produced but painfully slow and unimaginative.
The Stantons are an American family living in England; youngest son Will (Alexander Ludwig) begins to experience some strange occurrences after his fourteenth birthday, and his life will change forever after he learns that he is a Seeker.
Now, he must combat the forces of Dark alongside the Old Ones (yeah, that´s what they´re called; Ian McShane leads the pack), and find the Signs before the Dark Rider (Christopher Eccleston) or else the world will plunge into darkness. Or some such nonsense.
And it is nonsense, purportedly based on the popular 60´s & 70´s five-book series by Susan Cooper, but really just an amalgamation of the Harry Potter, Matrix, and Lord of the Rings series of films.
This one, however, completely lacks the conviction of the aforementioned, failing to bring us in to its fantasy world or convince us of any of the ever-prevalent mumbo-jumbo.
Talented British thesps do what they can with the material (Eccleston is sometimes engaging as the Dark Rider and his bumbling doctor alter-ego) but Ludwig is simply awful in the lead; he´s almost a clone of an early-90´s Zachery Ty Bryan, Tim Allen´s son on “Home Improvement”, and feels completely out of place here (nevermind that the character was British in the novels).
Justifiably tanked at the US box office; wretched title didn’t help much.
