Okay...truthfully, I knew this movie would not be a cinematic masterpiece. I knew it would be some low-budget, straight-to-video Lord of the Rings knock off. It was low-budget and it was straight-to-video. However, it wasn't a LOTR knockoff...which is unfortunate. The story was Beauty and the Beast all over again...only it was set it the days of the Vikings. This is a problem because the characters didn't act like Vikings, nor did they dress like Vikings. For God's sake they wear all wearing chain mail...CHAIN MAIL!!! Vikings were only a couple of centuries BEFORE chain mail. If this story had taken place on an imaginary world with imaginary tribes and people and such, it would have been much better. However, setting it in Viking era did nothing but fill the movie with historical inaccuracies.Inaccuracies aside, let's talk hair. Most of the actor were wearing wigs and it was obvious. There was one in particular...I remember him vividly. He was only in the movie for a couple of seconds. You say him in the background on the boat. He had no lines and no name that was mentioned. He was obviously just an extra. His job was to just blend in. Unfortunately, he didn't. Why?? Because he was wearing this ridiculous 1980's Britney Fox wig. This thing was WAY too big for the actor's head. It was just so terrible. All of the actors had bad wigs, but this one was the worst. Also, William Gregory Lee had hair extensions, but, apparently, the budget wasn't big enough for him to get a full head of them, so the producers just gave him a few. You could see where they were attached to his head and...it was awful. Also, what the heck was up with that little twig over his forehead. That thing got on my nerves.The acting was, by no means, great. It was like watching a high school play or an after school special (for those of you old enough to actually remember after school specials). Anything with Justin Whalin is destined to be crap...let me present Exhibit A: Dungeons & Dragons, Child's Play 3, Lois and Clark...you get the idea. However, he wasn't the worst actor...in fact, he did well. William Gregory Lee got on my nerves. Obviously, he wasn't really all that tough, because he seemed to be having trouble acting tough. Jane March was okay, but not great. David Dukas, who played the Beast/Agnar, was probably the best, but only whilst playing the Beast. He struggled through the three minutes that he played Agnar. Very strange. The other actors were nothing short of mildly mediocre.The SFX in this movie were...well...almost completely absent. The Beast was a guy in a prosthetic suit. And though it was a pretty cool idea, it really just looked like a guy in a bear skin rug. Also, the fires never looked real. Apparently, it was cheaper to make fake fire rather than actually set stuff on fire for real. The flames looked like those TV fireplace things and the smoke...well...there are no words to describe how bad the smoke looked. In the film's defense, though, this was a low-budget movie. That is something that must be taken into consideration. The weapons were obviously fake. They looked like wooden weapons that were spray-painted to look like metal only the producers hired some one-eyed imbreed from a Mississippi body shop to paint them.In the end. This film was low-budget and watching it gave constant reminders of this fact. However, the low budget wasn't the real problem. The real problem was that the producers tried to pass it off as a Viking tale. They should have just gone ahead and made it a cheap knock-off of LOTR. It would have actually been a better film. 3/10.

From the word Go, this was awful. Badly shot with what looked like a mobile phone camera and scenes set up without any hint of a lighting director in the vicinity it was still no warning for the sheer hilarity and obscurity of this B-Movie gem. Being fairly up on my European history made some of the glaring historical inaccuracies painfully obvious (CHAINMAIL for God's sake! CHAINMAIL! In pre-Christian Europe?! I don't think so!). But that added to it's car-crash charm!This isn't a spoiler but the best thing about the whole film is the sight of the world's most obvious hair extensions of the blonde guy. You have been warned!

Jane March at age 30 is no Viking teenage princess.The hair was bad. the CG flames were bad. The speech was nowhere near Scandinavia. The end was less than completely satisfying. But I'm glad to have seen this film. Jane March is a beautiful actress, and some of her scenes were fine ("And yet you live!"). The rest of the cast, the Beast, the story...not superb, not amazing, not surprising. And yet, more than just satisfactory. The Beauty and the Beast story is a healthy perennial, and this has some interesting variations thereon. I got this as a Netflix rental, and I was pleased enough to share it with my family and watch it a second time. Worth watching, not a disgrace to the actors, directors, film-makers. Good costumes, not disgusting, a quirky production. Loved the musical score. Solid workmanship with some charm.

When you see the cover you already know that the movie isn't going to be one of your favorites, but it looks like worth watching. It's made directly for TV, so what do you expect after all?All in all the movie is good, enjoyable and nice. But far from great. The acting is like watching some fantasy adventure TV series. Jane March is enjoyable. The directing and the camera-work are about average. The sets are nice. The costumes are all right. The story is good.Five things that would made the movie better: -Why vikings? They'd better have used some imaginary tribe or something. In that case no one would complain about things like "vikings do thins", "vikings don't do that" and stuff. Indeed, the vikings from this movie are quite far from the vikings in the history books and documentaries. -Better fires. The burning island of the beast don't look well -Better make-up and costumes. The vikings should be a little bit dirty, shouldn't they? These here look a little bit tidy. And Freya's wedding dress... well -Watch out what you shoot! We all know it's not a big budget production, but be more careful! In several of the close ups you in the cages of the beast you can actually see where the metal was soldered. This makes bad impression and spoils the things.This is a simple modest fantasy tale movie. It's satisfactory,but could be much better with more efforts and imagination.