Black Death

Title: Black Death (15)

Year: 2010

Running Time: 97 minutes

Director: Christopher Smith

Cast: Sean Bean (Ulrich), Eddie Redmayne (Osmund), Carice Van Houten (Langiva) Notes: Won three awards.

Rating: 9

Thoughts:   As plague breaks out across England, a monk is tasked with finding out why a village survives amidst rumours of a necromancer bringing people back to life.

I have to say it's so nice to see a film where Sean Bean survives for more than the first ten minutes!

This has an excellent underpinning sense of horror and it is obvious something is not as it seems. How it plays out though is cleverly done and you can feel the characters' own limited knowledge of what is happening.

The questing group are well played, with some decent names in the cast. The scenes are bleak and dirty, all adding to the realism. There's a nice pace to what is, after all, a slow-burning quest.

This is well directed and the script is strong. It's no medieval documentary but feels brutally believable, even if not wholly accurate at times.

A strong twist is well done, and so's the tangential endpiece, and overall it's a great medieval quest film. And it's a great audition for Van Houten, who went on to be Melisandre in Game Of Thrones.