Reviews

Many may say that this movie is not really about the Black Death (bubonic plague), since most of this film is about witch hunting, and there is no scene about how the doctors dealt scientifically with the plague, or even the church. But this film captures the effect that the plague causes, enormous suffering, despair that makes men torture themselves without meaning in response to the inexplicable cruel illness.

The film begins by showing this reality of the plague and introducing us to Osmund, a monk who deals with the hypocrisy of having an affair with a young woman, the girl (Averill) leaves for the forest to escape the plague and Osmund asks God to allow him to leave of the monastery and go with her, he finds his answer in Knight Ulric, who along with his men are hunting witches going after a supposed Necromancer in the forest. (this beginning reminds me a little bit of The Kingdom Of Heaven and The 13th Warrior)

Ulric's group is good, each one has a personality but not very different, Ulric is a cold knight with a sad past who casts his deep hatred on witches, but still a man faithful to God until the end. Wolfstan and Mold are similar to Ulric but do not have the same charisma, Swire is a mercenary who seems to care more about money than about the cause, and Dalywag is a torturer. These men are not saints, they look more like hunters. The problem is that they (except Ulric and Osmund) are not so captivating that we care about them, when they die, it doesn't make much difference.

The necromancer, and so the villain of the movie, Langiva is kind of disappointing, her dialogue is weak, she could be more interesting with better motivations, show more about what a witch is.

Technically the film is very good, the cinematography is beautiful, and the atmosphere of the time, the clothes, the places, the village and the forests; everything looks very beautiful. The action scenes are more or less, because the shaky camera effect gets in the way of seeing what is happening, the soundtrack is mostly not very striking, but when it reaches the end it acts by giving emotion.

The greatest strength and weakness of this film is the ending, the "beginning of the end" is beautiful in its horror, all that suspicious tension that Ulric and the others were feeling in being in that village turns out to be prophetic (remembers The Wicker Man), each one being taken to be tortured until he renounced his god, something that Christians suffered at the beginning of their religion, and that later turned to do the same to non-Christians. Here Ulric suffers what he must have done with several witches. This is a good script, with good direction and great performance.

But then, the film starts to lose its meaning, when for example Wolfstan and Mold leave the cage without anyone seeing, EXCEPT for the fact that there are about 40 people and guards watching them. Do they break free and make the whole village disappear? Do you mean that Ulric had been with the black death all this time and no one has seen it? when would he tell others that? he could infect others too... Why does the witch run away when Wolfstan and Mold break free? Averill is "brought back to life" only to die again, and no one cares because the film doesn't give us time and reasons to care about her lol. And Osmund, who after all he's been through, learns nothing and keeps doing the same thing as Ulric. The last few scenes are painful and confusing to watch, and just don't convince me. But still, it is a very good movie that I recommend to everyone!