Black Death: Critic Reviews

Slams Christians against pagans with little love for either.

I was agnostic about horror director Chris Smith's first film, Creep, but this has an insistent, dour darkness and narrative energy that is very watchable indeed.

The movie's real coup is in how it repeatedly shifts our allegiance from Christians to pagans, interrogating the unfathomably still-popular notion that barbarism is best countered with more of the same.

Smith keeps the fog, mist and rain machines working overtime, but to such little purpose that Black Death often looks like outtakes from Fiddler on the Roof.

Though deadly serious, Christopher Smith's European-made bubonic- plague melodrama provides good value with lots of blood and guts, as well as a solid cast.

Religion and morality are both found wanting in this medieval horror-drama devoid of good guys.

Early on "Black Death" falls victim to its own sluggish sickness, its narrative drive proving no match for the aggressively rotted pallor, dour acting and tiresomely handheld you-are-there aesthetics.

Black Death is the feel bad movie of the year, a film with an unrelentingly bleak view of humankind's barbaric nature and the notion that, no matter what your creed, violence only ever begets more violence.

This film bathes in bloody, brutal ambiguity, intelligently casting both Christians and pagans as murderous creeps in a way that looks back objectively at 14th century ignorance while shining an ugly, knowing light on contemporary religious arrogance, too

There are bright spots in this dark-ages movie

There's no glory for Black Death's mercenaries at the end of their journey, but for the audience there's a fascinating take on religion and morality that also features some pretty decent swordplay-and really, how much more can a movie offer?

Sean Bean completists and fans of neck-beards will no doubt enjoy, but overall Black Death an atmospheric but ultimately unaffecting exercise in medieval misery.

Built on the fascinating premise that God is actually kind of an asshole

A tedious road trip movie early on turns into a more interesting battle of wills in the second half. Worth a viewing.

"Going medieval" on your enemies isn't just a figure of speech in Christopher Smith's stylish spatter-horror exercise, which uses desperation-fueled religious fervor to interrogate the intersection of fear and faith.

Atmospheric and initially intriguing, but often meandering and ultimately forgettable. It's deficient in enough scares, thrills and palpable tension to keep you thoroughly captivated.

There's something here for just about everyone, or at least for everyone who looks back fondly on the similarly themed Wicker Man from 1973.

It derives horrified fascination from its audience without ever smirking or looking down on us.

Commendable in not going overboard in facile plague SFX for its first half. However, the end is rushed and mortally deadened by badly written dialogue.

Smith effectively recreates the chaos of the medieval era, where the educated and ignorant alike make life-and-death decisions based on superstition.

ferocious, fleet-footed entertainment

When your bubonic-plague movie manages to avoid the specter of Monty Python's Flying Circus ("Bring out'cha dead!"), it's definitely doing something right.

Bean owns this movie.

Grim aesthetics and an even grimmer worldview define Black Death, in which ardent piousness and defiant paganism both prove paths toward violence, hypocrisy, and hell.