Black Death (On Demand)
| release date | February 4 2011 |
| studio | Magnet Releasing |
| director | Christopher Smith |
| writer | Dario Poloni |
| starring | Sean Bean, Eddie Redmayne, Carice Van Houten, Rupert Friend, Kimberley Nixon |
| site | blackdeathmovie.com |
| trailer 1 | Trailer #1 |
1 Comments
Dont watch the trailer or the synopsis or expect anything, and this is one bad ass original take on the Black Plague. Better than SEASON OF THE WITCH, by far, this was my pick for Gem in the Rough 2010. Loved it.
One of the most compelling, chilling, suspenseful and suffocatingly tense medieval/thriller I have seen ever, pure macabre! Set during the Bubonic Plague’s first stages comes a group of men including Ulrich (Sean Bean) and Osmund (Eddie Redmayne) who wisely set out on a task to find necromancer a woman who may or may not have ties to satan. The acting comes from subtle but incredible force and intensity that makes you glue to your seat on the edge and when the violence comes it’s not over the top but very graphic and realistic so squeamish beware! The movie is very grim from start to finish and never lets up and you never know where the story is going to take you and it was refreshingly but harshly bleak, the creepy, nightmarish atmosphere makes sure of that and caps it off. When the story makes a fictional turn I was a bit disappointed because in the beginning it was more raw, intriguing and historic but the twist of that turn was very chilling and unsuspecting. Towards the end it gets unbearably dark and horrific and one character makes a turn for the devastating worst, what a shocking depressing conclusion. Overall it was an impressing entry to the genre and one that I wont soon forget about the world’s darkest times. Highly recommended!
Thought provoking, an uncompromising ending, intense, dreary. This movie is all of these things. Not really a horror movie at all, but it doesn’t need to be. A very good film.
Black death was just great. One of my favorites of 2010. What it lacked in action it made up for with its intrguing story and characters. Its a gem that should be seen. Do not expect gladiator here, but good story-telling and characters along with great acting and cinematography. It’s a full package. Highly recommended
Overall, pretty good. Well acted, good twists and turns, but a bit too lacking in the believability department, even for a movie set back in the middle ages.
A pretty decent movie. Not a 9 or 10 though.
Black Death is finely crafted, superbly acted and appropriately bleak take on the Black Plague/Dark Ages Europe. It’s thrilling and at the same time has some thought provoking things to say about human nature and religion. Highly Recommended, I’d give it a 8.5 if I could.
that Cillian Murphy lookin motherfucker killed it.
this is a very well-made film
I can’t believe the good ratings this movie has on BD. I was expecting great things considering the director, but instead was served up a wishy washy script that seemed like it was thrown together in 20 minutes. Plus I don’t know how we were meant to sympathise with the Christian soldiers since they were all IMMENSELY dislikable and quite frankly…dicks. WAAY overblown acting and drama considering the flimsy story and the end was just plain dumb. Just felt like watching a low budget Christian propaganda film. AVOID!
Liked this VERY MUCH!! Very Realistic – Wonderful art direction- Good Acting – Up close and personal camera Work- Violent and smart.
This is a dark, brutal, and brilliantly well scripted film. The acting is great, Not so much action but what was there was brutal as hell, and the cinematography is excellent. All In All, a more serious Centurion. And a hell of a lot better than Centurion too.
This movie was decent. I wouldn’t watch it again not the best movie smith did. Some of the kills were awesome. But IDK it was just to slow for me, nothing really exciting, like I’ve seen this 1000 times before. But I didn’t hate it. It’s just a one time see. The acting was good.
Love period movies like this so I was excited to see Black Death – and it did not disappoint. After reading up about the Black Death the movie really captured the darkness, fear and hysteria that came with nearly 75% of the population getting wiped out. The acting was good, it just continued to build, and the ending didn’t disappoint. A really good movie.
A good tale told with a solid cast of actors and realistic battle violence. Kept me glued to the end.
Hobo Approved(TM)
Black Death Joins the ranks of Flesh and Blood, as a medieval tale told during the time of the Black Death, or the bubonic plague. This plague wiped out somewhere close to half of the population of the known world. As can be imagined, the more primitive amongst the populace believed that God was punishing mankind for their sins. Witchcraft was suspected for nearly everything that happened, real and imagined. Stories of such were enough to get a person killed or burned alive.
The main premise of this story actually has little to do with the plague. It is mainly about envoys from the bishop searching out tales of a demon and necromancy in a village which has thus far been immune to the ravages of the plague. What follows is a dark and gritty story, full of violence and pain. The heroes here are clearly not much in the way of being good. While they believe in God, they do not see a place in heaven for them for what they have done in his name.
As a sort of dark medieval film, Black Death is solid. It features a solid cast buoyed by the always noble Sean Bean. The story moves along very fast and has just enough violence and action to keep you entertained. Make no mistake, this is more of a real film than any type of fantasy film. It is also fairly light on horror elements, outside of some good old fashioned torture. I rather liked the way the movie showed you how vile and violent people were back then, even the supposed heroes.
All in all, this is a very well directed, acted and paced movie and I find little about it that would make me hesitate to recommend it to others. Definitely worth a viewing and it has made a solid addition to my collection.
AWESOME! This is as epic as anything Ridley Scott has ever directed, and an entirely original historically based horror film fit to satisfy any gorehound. Christopher Smith has arrived!
Although I did enjoy this movie, I found it slightly slow moving and relatively anti-climactic. It was not a waste of time, but I would not watch it again. As always Sean Bean was great in this film. Although I did like the completely original storyline, I felt it almost got buried under the extravagance of the torture. I would have enjoyed more focus on the concept of hysteria and the ties of that into witchcraft.
Cool film that takes place during a terrible time in the earth’s history. The cinematography was outstanding, and the story was great.
Pretty cool movie. I’m a sucker for medieval-type movies and Black Death is well done. Pacing is a little on the slow side for us with attention problems but the film’s abundant qualities prevail. Check it out.
Not too long ago, I was in a World Studies classroom, studying the material covered in Christopher Smith’s “Black Death”. You could say that I was studying the Black Death/Black Plague itself, but then you would be wrong. We did not go in depth; we studied for only a few weeks, never quite touching the complex things. So this provoked me to dig around for my own; salvaging historical information regarding such a disastrous catastrophe. And let’s just say that after I was done, I felt like watching a movie about this information. And I chose Smith’s film over few.
Smith is a talented filmmaker; he’s the same man who made the entertaining and quite funny horror-comedy-thriller “Severence”. Now, he’s made a film that isn’t the slightest bit funny, yet still equally as entertaining and well-made. I admire Smith’s work as a directorial genius rather than an expert story-teller. He has yet to make a truly great film, but as long as he can make genuinely good ones, I’m OK. “Black Death” is a good movie, in my image, because there’s plenty to like about it. It is thrilling and even somewhat insightful. It gives us the impression that we are watching a medieval Gothic chiller and possibly more. That is because we are.
A knight (Sean Bean), a monk (Eddie Redmayne), and seven other fearless warriors (of some sort) accept a quest to find a small village where the plague has not spread, in the time of the plague. It is the year 1348, and populations are decreasing by day. As you can guess, this epidemic is none other than the infamous Black Plague, otherwise known as, The Black Death. When our heroes reach their destination, they learn that the people within the village are nothing more than nasty, violent pagans.
I saw an absolutely frightening film a while back called “The Wicker Man”. It was about a policeman who ventures to a Scottish island called Summersisle, looking for a missing girl. And he finds her all right, as we slowly learn that the people of the isle are indeed, nasty, violent Pagans. So in a sense, “Black Death” is “The Wicker Man”, except not as good, and not quite as deep.
But what I admire about Smith’s film is that it is knowledgeable. It deals with the questioning of religion, and it understands how important it was in such a struggle. It wasn’t JUST the plague that attacked the human race in those years; it was the possibility that maybe, just maybe, there was no God. The characters in the film ask themselves reasonable questions, such as “why would God be punishing us like this?” or “why don’t we just off ourselves if we can’t live a good life anymore?”
The film exists in a world where there are devils lurking around each corner. The hero characters brutally slaughter their enemies in whatever action scenes are present, although I understand why the violence was included, and the action is well-done, just like most everything else in “Black Death”. It’s strange how a film like this, which isn’t really anything special, doesn’t have particularly good acting present, and doesn’t have the best screen-writing involved, can still be an entertaining and intelligent ride. There was a lot that this film had to do for me to like it, and “Black Death” is good at deliverance. The imagery fits the grim dehumanized feeling of the time period, the overall atmosphere is suitably grim, and “Black Death” does not just exist as cinematic entertainment. It allows us to think a little, which is always welcome. It succeeds rather well as both a “horror film from Christopher Smith” and a “historical thriller from Christopher Smith”. It is many other things as well, but there’s only a handful that we can really care about. But at least it wasn’t plagued by the clichés; those always unwelcome things that make our films so genuinely boring.
Grim and literally unforgiving medieval story in times of plague that is a quite brutal portrayal of the almighty god vs pagan theme. Bean and cast bring the right goods to sell the time frame and action, the fight scenes are cool, and the final act is intense. Even the epilogue is dark. Nice little suprise out of nowhere, this isn’t perfect, but it is a good movie.
An incredible film. But it’s Eddie Redmayne’s extraordinary performance as the young monk that makes this required viewing.
Beautifully shot and well-acted, but ultimately lifeless and joyless. There are some serious feel-bad movies that I think are truly fantastic (Requiem for a Dream, The Machinist, Jacob’s Ladder), but they all feature moments of joy and hope. Even if those moments are short-lived, they serve the all-important purpose of giving the characters life and making us want to root for them.
Black Death features a well-developed lead character, but there isn’t so much a glimmer of light in him or any of the other characters. They feel almost as if they are dead already. Granted, this may be what the director was going for (after all, this was not a happy time to be alive), but it left me feeling completely detached from the characters and the setting.
It’s a shame, too, because Black Death has a fascinating tale of moral ambiguity at its core played out by diverse and complex characters. But he bottom line is that despite rich story, I just didn’t enjoy watching it play out.