By Jonathan Klotz
| Published
Historical films tend to be either romantic costume dramas or sweeping war epics, though sometimes, a film comes along that dares to do something different and takes on an era that studios are too afraid to embrace. That’s the case with Black Death, a surprise streaming hit on Max, not only is it set during the height of the plague, but it’s a darker, grittier take on medieval life than we’re used to seeing. It’s also not a costume drama or a tale of kings. Instead, it’s a historic action horror film, and there’s nothing else quite like it.
Medieval Men On A Mission
Black Death follows a group of beaten-down soldiers (including Sean Bean) and a neophyte monk (Eddie Redmayne) as they trek to a remote village that the sickness has not touched. Though desperate to find a cure, the real mission is to take down a necromancer using dark magic who has bewitched the village and could be the source of the plague. The journey to the village is not only dangerous and deadly, but it’s gorgeously shot with all the signs of death, decay, and rot that embody the era but so rarely get depicted on screen.
Once they reach the village, the group encounters its leaders, Hob (the incredibly prolific Tim McInnerny) and the alleged necromancer, the beautiful Lavigna (Game of Thrones Red Priestess, Carice Van Houten), who performs a miracle in front of the monk, testing his faith. Together, the pair gets one over on the soldiers, and Black Death takes a gruesome turn into folk horror with plenty of gore. By the end, viewers will be joining the soldiers as they wonder how much is real, and whether the Devil is to be found among the villagers.
Black Death Is The Right Type Of Throwback
With very few CGI effects, Black Death looks and feels like a throwback 70s horror with the body count to match. Directed by Christopher Smith, who also helmed the underrated time-bending thriller Triangle, the film made the most of its modest budget by filming in rural Germany. While it never hit theaters in the United States, the movie immediately found fans online, and today it has a 72 percent fresh Rotten Tomatoes rating from critics, and 49 percent from fans, which might sound like a negative, but this is a brave movie not afraid to take big swings and push the envelope: it’s not for everyone, and it doesn’t try to be.
Over the years, Black Death has quietly amassed a cult following, partially due to the rising popularity of Eddie Redmayne, Sean Bean, and Carice Van Houten, but also because of its unique visual style and disturbing story. Now it’s another streaming hit on Max and pulling in more eyeballs than films that cost four times as much to produce, proving that quality can still win out in the end. If you’ve never seen this one-of-a-kind medieval movie, and you think Saw is for kids, you owe it to yourself to experience the dark and gritty plague-filled world where life is brutish, short, and ugly.
Black Death is now streaming on Max.
