In Viy also known as The Forbidden Kingdom, Jason Flemyng is Jonathan Green an ambitious cartographer forced to flee his prospective father in law in England and goes to create detailed maps of Transylvania and he stumbles upon a forgotten Ukranian kingdom with a roving beast.
It is filled with villagers who fear witchcraft, monsters and legends with a cursed monastery high on the mountain that holds the body of Pannochka and is the source of all evil as she is some kind of spirit that controls the gateway to hell.
Green as a rational man and a scientist does not believe in monsters and myths but the things he sees might just get him to believe in the irrational especially as Pannochka's father wants to give her a proper burial.
The film is filled with wondrous special effects that would make Terry Gilliam or Tim Burton envious but the story is too muddled and the film veers from a twisted bizarre fairy tale to something more scary and bloodthirsty. The dubbing is very poor as well which is off putting but Flemyng provides goofiness and comic relief. The scenes with Charles Dance back in London have little reason to be in the final film.
It is filled with villagers who fear witchcraft, monsters and legends with a cursed monastery high on the mountain that holds the body of Pannochka and is the source of all evil as she is some kind of spirit that controls the gateway to hell.
Green as a rational man and a scientist does not believe in monsters and myths but the things he sees might just get him to believe in the irrational especially as Pannochka's father wants to give her a proper burial.
The film is filled with wondrous special effects that would make Terry Gilliam or Tim Burton envious but the story is too muddled and the film veers from a twisted bizarre fairy tale to something more scary and bloodthirsty. The dubbing is very poor as well which is off putting but Flemyng provides goofiness and comic relief. The scenes with Charles Dance back in London have little reason to be in the final film.