It’s nice to see that a filmmaker need not waste millions on computer animation to achieve that glassy, lifeless dead-eyed look in his characters onscreen. All one needs do, apparently, is hire Nicolas Cage.

At his best, Cage can bring a manic, some would say unhinged, unpredictability to roles that in other hands could be as thin as the script paper. He elevated the otherwise thankless drinking-himself-to-death role in “Leaving Las Vegas” to a full-on Oscar win. His decision to read the Big Daddy part in last year’s “Kick-Ass” in the voice of Adam West was pure lunatic genius. However, this experimental nature is decidedly haphazard, and, more often than not, his realization of the personalities he’s paid to embody begins and ends with whatever ludicrous hairpiece the makeup crew glues to his noggin. It’s a shame enough to the actor, but is becoming more and more of an insult to his audience. With a spate of recent pictures like “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” and “Bangkok Dangerous,” Cage seems to have whole-heartedly given over to playing dress-up instead of playing characters.

Of all the reasons for an artist to take on a role, probably the opportunity to swing a sword around and learn to ride a horse might not be the most noble, but there you have it. “Season of the Witch” certainly offered these perks to Cage, but it’s a cold comfort for anyone else hoping for some version of entertainment from the exercise. As an errant 14th century knight who conscientiously objects to the slaughter of innocent women in the church’s crusades against the heathen masses, Cage’s character returns to his Eastern European homeland to find it decimated by a particularly gruesome strain of the black plague, which the local clergy chalk up to a curse brought down on them by a witch, which they conveniently have shackled up in their basement. Offered amnesty if he agrees to transport the accused blasphemer from one accursed keep to another to be charged for her devilish crimes, Cage does indeed ride a horse, and occasionally pulls his blade on various foes.

Accompanied by his right hand Chewbacca, here in the form of perennial gorilla Ron Perlman (who recently identified himself as a “franchise killer,” citing his involvement in the final installments of the “Aliens,” “Star Trek,” “Blade,” and “Police Academy” series) and a guardedly colorless band of helping hands with very silly names, a rickety bridge is crossed, incantations are read from ancient tomes, and a dark forest is navigated through a Transylvanian fog. Some wolves attack at one point and... Oh man, just make it stop.

At the center of all this yawningly familiar territory is the dirty young woman (Claire Foy) in their charge, alternately flirting with and taunting her captors from her wagon-mounted prison. Her potential innocence is teased at once or twice, but the script makes it clear from the get-go that there’s something clearly wrong with this girl, and the assertion that she would be delivered a “fair trial” at the abbey on the other side of the mountains, in a time when “fair trial” is demonstrably being chained, beaten, hung and drowned for good measure, is at best a dubious one. Is she in fact a witch? Maybe. Is she possessed by a horrible devil? Could be. Is she just the victim of the church’s rampant paranoia? Who cares. The character, to whom freshman screenwriter Bragi Schut failed to even assign a silly name, is never explored in any significant way and fails to provoke the least interest, importance or concern.

It’s unclear whether the story is a failed attempt at a complex study of dualities of human natures and the redemptive power of faith among the fallen, or an abject success at pandering to the apetites of Bible Belt 14-year-olds. Mired in a grim no-man’s land between the worst works of Michael Crichton and Ridley Scott and the best works of Sam Raimi and Monty Python, it’s part road movie, part buddy comedy, part historical drama, part paranormal thriller. Aside from going nowhere, not being funny, employing wild anachronisms, and being almost completely devoid of thrills, the whole endeavor, like too many colors mixed together by an amateur painter, is a dingy, unsatisfying gray.

If director Dominic Sena, who worked with Cage before in the dumb but exuberant motorhead junkfest “Gone in 60 Seconds,” had thought to define what kind of film he was making, or embrace the “Army of Darkness” absurdity of the premise (or possibly just cast Bruce Campbell in it instead of Cage), there may have been some hope of salvaging the thing. It only hurts worse that he filmed the entire journey in sullen, dreary tones, rendering the majesty of their Alpine locations down to a grimy overcast gloom—a choice that may have been intended to reflect the misery of ever-present pestilence, or the “ambiguity” of the leaden characters, or, more likely, just to mask the walloping shoddiness of the dreadfully less-than-special effects. But the cinematography serves only to underscore how desperately tedious and unappealing a ride they’ve taken us on.

The costumes look good, though, all manly leather and wool and fur with iron buckles all over, and Cage appears comfortable enough, if a shade bored, in his scraggily new wig. However, in a film that so thoroughly neglects to allow for suspension of disbelief, there’s one glorious moment in which an audience can truly trust: when Cage mumbles the line, “Let’s go. There’s no hope here.” Amen, brother.

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