Even if you can count the amount of encounters this party has on a single hand, it seems to draw out into something that took someone from point A to a faraway B. The by-product is the successful sense of the journey. Regardless the dedication to believable sets and shots, or at least persistence to keep away from wall breaking TV-movie level CGI is something well worth applause. There’s a skilled location scout on board, I’ve been to England once before and in an I-was-there-for-like-a-week-so-clearly-I-know-everything-sort-of-way I can affirm that they do in fact have way more scenic nature than us. The story has a real sense of scale, quickly moving from being drowned in limp corpses, plague masks and suffering within the first few minutes to the open, if murky, forests and villages of the English countryside. Osmund enthusiastically offers to aid them, with his own priorities in mind, though as he’ll learn from this journey, the band of swordsmen won’t be the only ones vying for his trust and faith. Seeking to escape the monastery, he takes what seems like an offer from above when a band of holy-men mercenary hybrids seek a guide to help them hunt down the likes of witchcraft for the bishop. This omnipotent wrath, along with other gestures of the holy is exactly what’s troubling Osmund, a young monk torn between his faith, a secret love with a fair maiden and the general depravity of existence. It doesn’t have the same CNN hype to it, but the English countryfolk aren’t so chipper about having their population decimated by a virus so vicious it seems like punishment from god.
So that, in fact, does sound kind of metal. It’s not about metal, sadly, but it is about Sean Bean looking like he just walked off the Lord of the Rings set and a team of rambunctious killers investigating a town unaffected by the plague to sniff out a heretic. I wonder if there’s a band named Swine Flu… What was I talking about… Oh yeah, this movie. I know, I know, it’s just a synonym for one of history’s most infamous plagues, one which only make our excessive paranoia over swine flu and SARS seem like meagre whining (not to mention that there are probably a half dozen bands named Black Death) but holding hands with the right font? Well that’s just rocking. Can I just start by saying how metal that title is? What a rockin’ black metal name for a film.