Black Death is a movie not to be missed. Production values are excellent, and the film hits on all cylinders, from a crisp screenplay by Dario Poloni to outstanding performances by all involved. I chose this film because it was in the horror category, but Poloni weaves a seamless tale of the hypocrisy and mysticism of religion, and its antithesis, all the while highlighting the superstition and ignorance that must have been rife at this point in history. In this way, it's less of a "horror" movie than it is an allegory on religion and the frailties and imperfections of the human beings who invented it.Sean Bean drives tremendous performances all around, with a particularly noteworthy performance by Eddie Redmayne as Osmund the monk. The costumes and photography are also stunning, with lurid depictions of death and corpses in typical cities/towns, contrasted by lush greenery portrayed during "the quest". Well worth your time...

This movie is first and foremost, as others stated, gritty. There is so much grit, that it goes beyond historical realism and into the realm of horror right from the start. One thing to think about was that while the plague was horrible, it most certainly wasn't all death all the time everywhere interspersed with the occasional witch-hunt, because then with a lot of people dead, the survivors would have all died because there would have been no one to grow, sell, transport and store food. Yet this movie focuses exclusively on the worst things possible. It could aptly be summarized as "14th century: Worst-of".This includes the characters. While the characters are certainly all possible, believable, multi faceted, and well acted, they are all awful people and do not represent anyone apart from themselves (which many reviewers seem to have missed). This is not an exploration of the nature of religion, this is a character piece about a few of the worst people in an already awful time. As such, the events were treated objectively. There was visible effort not to depict the christians as one dimensional power hungry zealots, and the pagans not as simply evil people who do nothing but awful things simply because they hate religion. Nonetheless they all ended up doing awful things.And this is where the movie starts earning negative points, because doing so (while plausible) is simply moronic. The people of the village have no reason for cruelty, and the sole moment of legitimate interest with the revelation about the supposed necromancy is strongly overshadowed by the massive amounts of gratuitous violence directly before and after. This is stupidity way beyond what can be explained by cliché medieval ignorance. It makes no sense for the pagans to immediately turn to what is essentially satanism, and it makes no sense for the squad to want to make them suffer just because they are without god before they realize this. That was not their mission. Hanging the new convert also makes no sense. Least of all sense can be seen in the killing of the girl, when a few questions would definitely not have hurt and could have cleared up the situation.Finally the character development that occurs beyond this is strictly nonsensical. Having killed someone in error resulting in murdering innocent people and becoming the antithesis of your former self is not a very likely thing to happen. This ending also just felt unnecessary and jarring, just to depress the audience more for no reason. I do not appreciate that.Altogether a movie which is a statistically unlikely collection of quite possibly the worst people in the worst time of history, without a real point, except that being evil is bad.

Medieval movie around the plague, which means mud beneath our feet, oppressive atmosphere of gloom, rampant superstition in the name of an austere god who may be punishing mankind.But we don't have a cinematician who will thread deeply around images, merely a director who films plot scenes and strings them into a story, here about mercenaries venturing into the forest in search of a necromancer. It's all sloppily filmed without abstraction that will permeate beneath the words and gestures to uncover fundamentals.It has some mystery I guess, a few reversals about the nature of evil as belief in a story, but it's without anything to recommend it. Stagy and announcing every bit of conflict through actors. Looking back it will be swallowed up in a murk of samey b-movies about medieval darkness.

Really really wanted to like this movie, and assumed I would. It has all the elements to make it an awesome movie to my taste - Sean Bean in medieval garb, looking and being a bad-ass (though he at no point says the word 'Bastard - a real let-down!); a little bit of the mysteries and God vs. Pagan religion argument as seen from the Middle Ages' experience; and a nice healthy dollop of blood, gore and excruciatingly painful death.However, the story itself plunged so quickly in at the deep end, and the characters we were swiftly introduced to were given so little time for real depth, that I found it very hard to find my empathy for them. Eddie Redmayne's character came across as whiny, where I'm sure I should be feeling greatly sorry for him. Sean Bean's Ulric was a little too ruthless, and the other soldiers in their troupe weren't that knowable, so by the time we get to the village, I really don't feel I have a side. In fact, to see Lord Percy - sorry - Tim McInnerny turn up, I almost felt like I should be on his.Overall, it was a nice watch. I liked the story, but it all took place so fast, I wanted more time to get to know the knights under Ulric, and the person I felt most sorry for was Averill.I wasn't sure I quite liked the ruthlessness of the pagans either - sure, it's a Kill or Be Killed situation overall, but still, the amount of times I've seen bloodthirsty, bedevilled, brainwashed pagans (speaking as a modern pagan myself) is beginning to wear more than a little thin.I'm also pretty sure that Carice Van Houten got cast as Melisandre on these merits.The story arc is good, just too short. The script has a nice, authentic flavour to it, with some nice little twists, and the acting is consistent and engaging throughout - but without a real feeling for who to root for and exactly why, I'm not this film's biggest fan, I regret to say.