Black Death (2010)

Fourteenth Century England is in the grip of the bubonic plague and bishop's envoy Ulric (Sean Bean) is leading a band of grizzled mercenaries to investigate rumours of an isolated village that has mysteriously remained untouched by the plague.

Driven by the belief that this 'miracle' is the work of an evil necromancer with the ability to raise the dead, they recruit novice friar Osmund (Eddie Redmayne) to guide them through the marshes that form the final stage of their journey.

However, all  are quite unprepared for what they find in the nameless village.

With strong overtones of Apocalypse Now (and its inspiration Heart Of Darkness by Joseph Conrad), and a sprinkling - because of its powerful religious motivations - of The Wicker Man, Black Death is a flawed gem.

While Bean growls his way through charismatically as the grizzled anti-hero Ulric (a fine addition to a portfolio that embraces Richard Sharpe, Ned Stark and Boromir) and Eddie Redmayne - star of the excellent Medieval drama The Pillars Of The Earth as well as many laudable movie appearances - is great as the conflicted priest, the film has issues with its pacing.

The award-winning Black Death is suitably grim and gritty visually, but misses opportunities on its journey to the village to further explore the horrific, apocalyptic world director Christopher Smith (of Creep and Severance - not that one, the 2006 film - fame) has crafted.

Ulric's party of coin-hungry soldiers are a gloriously dirty, stinking, vicious bunch of veterans, torturers and murderers, but they are also complex individuals rather than just cookie-cutter thugs, even though they are secondary characters on Osmund's journey of self-discovery.

There is a wonderful, unnerving scene when the travellers meet a party of flagellants heading in the opposite direction down river, but we could have done with a few more moments like this before the final act.

The film then features a drawn-out epilogue, detailing the aftermath of the events that take place in the village, which is just a shade too long and overbalances the narrative as it repeats the point it is making a couple of times.

But this doesn't stop Black Death from being a powerful indictment of the 'brainwashing' power of organised religion and the excesses it can drive someone to if they believe 'God' is on their side.

Ultimately, neither the believers nor the non-believers come out of this in a particularly good light, but at least the film raises the issue in the first place.

Those looking for some kind of medieval torture fetish fare will be disappointed. Although not overly gory, Black Death isn't without its moments of blood letting, yet the few instances of torture - or suggested torture - aren't depicted graphically.

Conversely, the one real extended fight scene - a battle between bandits and Ulric's men in the woods - is more akin to a barroom brawl (with swords, maces and whatever-comes-to-hand) than any sort of elegant or stylised swordplay.

Perhaps too much information is relayed to the audience through voice-over and exposition as well (the 'explanation' of what's going on to Osmund, in the misty marshes, is heavy with atmosphere but maybe a bit of an infodump of something we probably could have worked out for ourselves).

It's a pity that the end result of Black Death doesn't quite reach the film's ambitions, because it has the look and mood down perfectly, managing to be psychologically unnerving as well as viscerally exciting and mentally challenging.

Draug (2018)

In 11th Century Sweden, a party escorting a missionary goes missing when travelling through the enormous forest of Ödmården, which divides the north from the south.

A rescue party sets out, led by Hakon (Ralf Beck) and his foster daughter, Nanna (Elna Karlsson), on her first real mission and her first visit back to the region where she was born.

Entering the forest, the initial problems the group encounters are all-to-human bandits, but after that things take a darker, more supernatural turn, as they uncover the true fate of the missing Christian emissary and his escorts.

"Ödmården is an ancient forest on Sweden's east coast, traditionally dividing the north from the south.

It used to take several days to pass through. Outlaws formed bands inside the forest where they resorted to pillaging any travellers daring to pass the long dark.

Also beasts and bears and wolves were growling and howling inside the vastness of Ödmården, frightening the people living outside its borders and soon stories of occult and darksome origin arose from the area.

And they still do."

- from the film's official website

A low-budget Swedish film, the trailer and poster for Draug had led me to expect a cocktail of History's Vikings and The Blair Witch Project... and it was that, but more.

There was a definite element of Apocalypse Now/Heart Of Darkness - a theme addressed similarly in 2009's bigger budgeted Valhalla Rising - but also traces of The Descent and a splash of J-horror ghost stories.

The movie's small budget means there are moments when Draug resembles a high-quality LARP or a Nordic cosplay, but the actors and scenery bring a gritty verisimilitude that soon dispels those random thoughts.

Shot on location, the film is tense and atmospheric, and only occasionally confusing when there's a variety of things kicking off in the shadows of the dark trees.

While not overly gruesome, this isn't one for the faint of heart as it dabbles in some taboo subjects (such as casual torture and infanticide) and one character has a nickname that makes Preacher's Arseface seem socially acceptable.

Smartly scripted and dripping with local folklore, Draug dishes up some unexpected moments of deliberate laugh-out-loud humour in early scenes that soon give way to screaming, insanity and dying as the adventuring party plunges deeper in to the legendary forest of Ödmården.

Hammer Of The Gods (2013)

Apocalypse Now meets Dungeons & Dragons in the brutal (if derivative) low-budget, Viking action flick Hammer Of The Gods.

Prince Steinar (Nashville's Charlie Bewley), arrives in England ahead of his own army, to meet up with his father, King Bagsecg (Game Of Thrones' James Cosmo), for a war on the Saxons - only to find that his father has already engaged in the enemy in battle and come off worse.

The dying king entrusts Steiner with finding his estranged first-born, the legendary Hakan (Da Vinci's Demons' Elliot Cowan), to take his rightful place at the head of the Viking hordes.

Steiner sets out with his best friend, Hagen (Clive Standen aka Rollo from Vikings), foul-mouthed berserker Grim (Michael Jibson), superstitious Jokul (Guy Flanagan), and his cowardly younger brother Vali (Theo Barklem-Biggs).

Along the way - like any good Dungeons & Dragons overland expedition - they have a series of random encounters (all resolved through the violence, of course) and join up with a friend of Hakan, Ivar The Boneless (Ivan Kaye aka King Aelle from Vikings) and his slavegirl Agnes (Alexandra Dowling aka Queen Anne from the BBC series The Musketeers).

Encounters with masked Saxons and party in-fighting see Steiner's adventuring group gradually  whittled down until he finally finds his mysterious brother - which is when things go really Apocalypse Now!

Hakan has 'gone native' - à la Colonel Kurtz - and is living in a cave with a mob of cannibalistic Picts who worship him as a god. He even has a scribe Ulric (Game Of Thrones' Francis Magee) on hand to record his proclamations, in homage to Dennis Hopper's photojournalist in Apocalypse Now.

Directed by Farren Blackburn (who gave us the awful Doctor Who Christmas Special: The Doctor, The Widow And The Wardrobe), Hammer Of The Gods does a pretty decent job of masking its budgetary restrictions by dressing up its action-driven plot with a general hand-wavy 'otherworldly' vibe.

That aspect doesn't work quite as well as in Valhalla Rising - which uses a very similar atmosphere for its own particular Viking take on Apocalypse Now and Aguirre, The Wrath Of God - but Hammer Of The Gods still delivers in the brutality stakes and a solid, unambiguous ending.

This isn't a cerebral meditation on life, fate and religion, but a well-acted, violent, low budget action movie about a band of Vikings on a cross-country quest for something other than treasure.

Valhalla Rising (2009)

Television's Hannibal Lecter Mads Mikkelsen is One-Eye, the Viking ultimate fighting champion, a mysterious mute slave so dangerous he has to be kept in chains at all times - even when he fights.

Eventually he escapes captivity and after exacting revenge on his captors he - and the young lad who has been looking after him (Maarten Stevenson) - fall in with a bunch of Christian Vikings heading to the Holy Land to liberate Jerusalem.

Unfortunately once at sea they become lost in a mysterious fog and when they eventually make landfall it isn't the Middle East but the brave new world of the Americas.

Valhalla Rising is not your typical Viking movie. Languid, episodic and mesmerising, with minimal dialogue, it has far more in common with Aguirre, The Wrath Of God (and, by extension, Apocalypse Now) than, say, Pathfinder or Outlander - even down to the harassment from unseen, missile-firing enemies.

Mix in One-Eye's bloody prophetic visions (which he can't share with anyone, of course) and the occasional reality-challenging montage, such as the sequence where the Christians appear to be attacking each other as One-Eye constructs an impossible pillar of odd-shaped rocks, and you have a film that is far more mystical than mainstream.

It clearly all means something but I'm not entirely sure what - perhaps Mikkelsen's one-eyed berserker is meant to represent Odin of Norse mythology and the young boy is Thor?

Valhalla Rising is definitely a DVD that will require a second viewing - but with the commentary track turned on.

What isn't in doubt is the gorgeous, but bleak, landscapes against which everything is framed. The harsh elements are as much a factor as anything else in this atmospheric drama, even to the extent that there are no buildings featured at all; the characters never have any form of comfort. There are also no women involved either.

Anyone coming to this expecting massive battle scenes, constant clashes between hordes of blood-soaked Vikings and a fast-and-furious action-adventure will be disappointed, but if you are open to something a bit different then you might find Valhalla Rising piquing your interest.

Aguirre, The Wrath Of God (1972)

Set deep in the Amazonian rainforests of South America in the mid-16th Century, Werner Herzog's Aguirre, The Wrath Of God is a mesmerizing tale of an adventurer's descent into his own "heart of darkness" and the fate of those he pulls along with him.

Fresh from his conquest of the Incas, Gonzalo Pizarro (Allejandro Repulles) leads his army down the Andes and into the jungle, searching for the legendary city of gold, El Dorado.

The film opens with a languid scene of Pizarro's forces, with their cannons, Indian slaves and supplies, snaking down the mountain side and this quickly establishes the pace that Herzog adopts for this movie.

After a while hacking through the jungle, Pizzaro calls a halt to his expedition and decides to send off a small unit to scout ahead and hopefully learn the location of El Dorado and the disposition of hostile natives in the area.

Leading the group are Don Pedro de Ursúa (Ruy Guerra) - who has brought his mistress along with him, Inez de Atienza (Helena Rojo) - Lope de Aguirre (Klaus Kinsi) - who is accompanied by his 15-year-old daughter, Florés (Cecilia Rivera - and, representing Spanish royalty, nobleman Don Fernando de Guzmán (Peter Berling).

The group heads off on rafts down the river and it's not long before it becomes clear that the already slightly unbalanced Aguirre is determined to undermine his commander, Don Pedro, and take control of the group.

However, he's a canny old sod and orchestrates events so that although Don Pedro is usurped, Don Fernando is put in charge and the group declares itself independent of Spain with Don Fernando as the first emperor of El Dorado.

From there, the film is a series of random encounters as the group drifts down river, plagued by diminishing supplies and harassed by (mostly) unseen natives who pepper them with darts, arrows and spears.

For a film about conquistadors there is little to no actual fighting, although a lot of guns and cannons are fired, because Aguirre's party seldom meets face-to-face any of the people they are trying to conquer and convert to Christianity.

As their adventure continues and the group gets whittled down, so Aguirre's insanity increases and he starts making increasingly bizarre proclamations, as their progress becomes more and more dream-like.

Many, many scenes go on for just a bit too long, just enough time for the audience's mind to start questioning 'what's going on? why am I watching this?'

And the reason you stay watching Aguirre, The Wrath Of God is that it is incredibly compelling.

Filmed entirely on location in the Peruvian rainforest, on tributaries of the Amazon River, there is an almost documentary-like quality to the film's reality.

This is further heightened by Kinski's understated portrayal of Aguirre, a man of incredible charisma and intelligence who is also clearly several cards short of a full deck.

Although far from a silent movie, much emphasis is placed upon silence and the measured dialogue manages to embrace such topics as power, religion, corruption, megalomania and hallucination.

There are obvious comparisons to Apocalypse Now (which was based, in part, on this movie, as well as Joseph Conrad's Heart Of Darkness), both on screen and in the tales of behind-the-scenes antics getting the movie made, although Aguirre relies more on atmosphere and less on an enigmatic protagonist - in a sense Kinski is both Martin Sheen's and Marlon Brando's characters, as both the explorer and the person driven insane by what he finds.

This certainly isn't a film for a casual viewer or those who need "all-action, all-the-time", but as a fictionalised account of how such an expedition, led by a powerful figure such as Aguirre, could go so inevitably wrong, then this is interesting viewing.

HALLOWEEN HORROR: Mandy (2018)

Revenge thrillers are not renowned for their complex plots and they don't come more linear than Nicolas Cage's wonderously visceral Mandy (out on DVD this week).

It's 1983 and grizzled lumberjack - and man of few words - Red Miller (Cage) and his artistic, hippy, girlfriend Mandy Bloom (Andrea Riseborough) live an idyllic life in the wilderness.

Unfortunately, by chance, one day Mandy catches the eye of failed musician and deranged cult leader Jeremiah Sand (Linus Roache).

Sand employs demented biker gang The Black Skulls to kidnap Mandy for his pleasure, but things don't go exactly according to plan, sending Red on an epic, furious, quest for vengeance.

At times feeling like a journey into Hell curated by David Lynch, Mandy is part Apocalypse Now, part Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and part Unforgiven, taking queues from multiple genres as writer/director Panos Cosmatos aims his laser-focus on Red's mythic mission of revenge.

I loves me some weird cult shit and Mandy delivers on that front with The Black Skulls and Sand's Children of the New Dawn, and enough peculiar characters and mannered dialogue to populate a suburb of Twin Peaks.

Startling visuals merge with subtle camera tricks to disorientate the viewer, enhancing our insights into the minds of both protagonist and antagonist, creating an artistic cocktail of psychedelic grindhouse.

Reminiscent of Baskin in its brutal relentlessness, Mandy, however, is more concerned with the human - and occasionally superhuman - monster than the cosmic.

The role of Red is one that only Cage could truly have embodied, segueing from effortless charm to ruthless killer as his descent into madness progresses.

With a running time just shy of two hours, Mandy feels a fraction of that duration thanks to its spectacular pacing and addictive imagery.

The plot may be a short railroad, but the scenery is breathtakingly hypnotic as you are catapulted along this stunning and unforgettable ride.

Ad Astra (2019)

When, late in the 21st Century, the Earth is bombarded by disruptive electronic waves seemingly emanating from Neptune , the U.S. Space Command contacts unflappable astronaut Major Roy McBride (Brad Pitt).

It turns out his legendary father, Dr Clifford McBride (Tommy Lee Jones) disappeared in that area decades ago.

He had been leading an expedition to the edge of the solar system in pursuit of proof of the existence of intelligent extraterrestrial life.

SpaceCom reveals to Roy that they believe his father is actually alive and they want him to travel to Mars to send a message to where they think his father's craft is, to try and find out what is going on.

However, upon reaching Mars, Roy discovers that the story he grew up believing about his father's heroism might not be the truth, and darker things are afoot.

Very quickly, the cineliterate will realise that Ad Astra is Apocalypse Now in space.

Roy's journey into the heart of darkness of space is a a series of vignettes, random encounters (to borrow a gaming phrase) with people and incidents that echo Willard's journey into Cambodia (there are no tigers in space, but there are experimental primates).

This connection is heightened by Roy's inner monologue and, later, the playing of random excerpts from Clifford's log, when he's seeking to justify his actions.

As the film strives to present a realistic view of space travel (more Gravity or The Right Stuff than Firefly or Star Wars), this throws up some bizarre incongruities along the way, like the moon buggy chase with gun-totting space pirates and the utterly preposterous sequence when Roy "breaks in" to a launching rocket.

Ad Astra could also have benefited from more time with Clifford in its last act, giving Tommy Lee Jones a chance to go full Marlon Brando and start mumbling about "the horror, the horror".

Conversely, the whole sub-plot about the "power surges from space" hitting the Earth felt, ultimately, redundant.

Even though it served as the inciting incident that sent Roy off on his melancholic solar quest to find the father he had long thought dead, it added a level of confusion to the story that just wasn't really needed.

Especially when it seemed, in the end, the problem was essentially solved by flicking a switch.

There are also inevitable 2001: A Space Odyssey vibes from Ad Astra and the Chekhov's Gun feeling that there's going to be a big twist, or some major surprise, in the final act.

Spoilers: that there isn't actually plays to the hard science message of the story, and I'm not one to quibble over what a film isn't about as writer-director James Gray and co-writer Ethan Gross clearly had a point they wanted to make about man's place in the cosmos.

And they made it. I'm just not sure how well they made it.