Boring, over-political, tech fuzed mess

Absolutely the worst movie.

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

This movie is first and foremost, as others stated, gritty. There is so much grit, that it goes beyond historical realism and into the realm of horror right from the start. One thing to think about was that while the plague was horrible, it most certainly wasn't all death all the time everywhere interspersed with the occasional witch-hunt, because then with a lot of people dead, the survivors would have all died because there would have been no one to grow, sell, transport and store food. Yet this movie focuses exclusively on the worst things possible. It could aptly be summarized as "14th century: Worst-of".This includes the characters. While the characters are certainly all possible, believable, multi faceted, and well acted, they are all awful people and do not represent anyone apart from themselves (which many reviewers seem to have missed). This is not an exploration of the nature of religion, this is a character piece about a few of the worst people in an already awful time. As such, the events were treated objectively. There was visible effort not to depict the christians as one dimensional power hungry zealots, and the pagans not as simply evil people who do nothing but awful things simply because they hate religion. Nonetheless they all ended up doing awful things.And this is where the movie starts earning negative points, because doing so (while plausible) is simply moronic. The people of the village have no reason for cruelty, and the sole moment of legitimate interest with the revelation about the supposed necromancy is strongly overshadowed by the massive amounts of gratuitous violence directly before and after. This is stupidity way beyond what can be explained by cliché medieval ignorance. It makes no sense for the pagans to immediately turn to what is essentially satanism, and it makes no sense for the squad to want to make them suffer just because they are without god before they realize this. That was not their mission. Hanging the new convert also makes no sense. Least of all sense can be seen in the killing of the girl, when a few questions would definitely not have hurt and could have cleared up the situation.Finally the character development that occurs beyond this is strictly nonsensical. Having killed someone in error resulting in murdering innocent people and becoming the antithesis of your former self is not a very likely thing to happen. This ending also just felt unnecessary and jarring, just to depress the audience more for no reason. I do not appreciate that.Altogether a movie which is a statistically unlikely collection of quite possibly the worst people in the worst time of history, without a real point, except that being evil is bad.

It's 1348 England. The plague has descended on the lands. Novice monk Osmund (Eddie Redmayne) volunteers to lead a group of knights led by Ulric (Sean Bean) on a quest to find a rumored sanctuary village in the marsh. Osmund is conflicted about his love for a village girl. After a long disturbing journey, they find the isolated village protected by herbalist Langiva (Carice van Houten).This is the muddy dark middle ages in a semi-realistic fashion. It's ugly and filled with superstition. Redmayne and Bean are compelling leads. The dark brooding pace does take its toll. It's not really an exciting romp. The village has a slightly eery feel. This is an anti-supernatural horror.

(56%) A worthy for most cinema fans smallish produced period drama/horror that's perfectly well made, nicely shot, with a cast of quite big name stars. The plot is pretty basic stuff focused mainly around Oscar winner Eddie Redmayne playing a young monk in training, escorted by the perfectly cast Sean Bean to uncover the a mysterious village lead by the great Tim McInnerny. The plot heats up very nicely once the Christian and Pagan worlds collide, as this switches gear from action adventure into horror. Above all else this is an interesting sit that offers more than just plain and simple 14th century set blood and gore.

This film is another underrated masterpiece of medieval times. The story and it's characters are full of depths and all the actors live up to their part. Especially the two protagonists with Sean Bean in a role nobody else could play.Despite the horror the darkness and the grimm atmosphere this is a must see movie that keeps every kind of audience satisfied to the end. And until that end the plot cleverly keeps the audience constantly trying to guess if there is something supernatural around or if its all man's work.Puts a perfect mix of true medieval hard characters who laugh at the face of death against godly men, stirred in a plague striken country with a dose of different religions beliefs. Black Death is a film that never disappoints.