Knight of the Dead

I should start by saying I am a big fan of Zombie and Post-Apocaliptic movies, and when I heard about this one, it sparked my curiosity.

I read a review here saying it was a refreshing movie, different style than the million zombie titles made in the recent years.

It was a total disappointment...

Yes, the setting was different from what we usually see in zombie movies, but the story is quite weak, the acting is as good as the story and there is no explanation or a proper ending.

The cinematography is good enough and there is little CGI, which could be a good thing seeing the abuse of it in the new movies, but still, doesn't add up to being a good movie.

I wouldn't recommend it.

KNIGHT OF THE DEAD (2013) is another extremely cheap British zombie film with a twist: a medieval setting! Our protagonists are a group of knights who have their hands full transporting the mythical Holy Grail through a land ravaged by the black death when they find themselves set upon by a zombie horde. Although, given the lack of money here, it's more like a few shambling extras.

Shot in and around Snowdonia and a ruined castle, this outdoorsy adventure film is cheap through and through and suffers from the usual gamut of bad acting, non-existent scripting and poor pacing. There's more action than horror but the fight choreography is bad and the only time I was impressed was when one of the stars does a random back flip. Not much gore either, just a few severed heads rolling about and the usual bitings. If you want to see historical zombies done properly, I recommend the Korean show KINGDOM.

I rarely write movie reviews, but I mostly do when I feel that a movie is either unnecessarily praised, or excessively denigrated. "Knight of the dead" is the latest. Seriously, this movie was rated worse than "Sharktopus" on IMDb?!?

This is your typical B-movie way of making movies. Low-budget, actors you never heard of, cheesy and cheap FX... But this movie is really positively surprising. Low-budget, that's for sure, but there is still a guaranteed minimum of gore (with mutilations, guts, blood, you know the drill). Also, the landscape is absolutely stunning. You never get bored watching this 1h18min movie, mostly filled with bandit raids or zombie attacks. And the zombie makeup is pretty well-made: not at all times, but it does the job.

Of course, there is some bad CGI from time to time (creating full hordes of zombies, or adding blood), but it's far from being REALLY annoying, and believe me, I HATE CGI. That is still a bit of a shame.

All in all, what can be said about KOFD? Cheap b-movie. Crazy concept. But still fast-paced, gory and fun. Recommended for anyone into zombie movies.

A priest has to get The Holy Grail across a valley during the Black Plague. The plague is a horde of medieval zombies.

This thing had awesome locations, and a potentially cool idea, but then screwed it all up. The first annoying factor is the grey dull tinge they give to the picture. I know they want to create a mood but it just makes people think their TV is on the fritz.

The acting wasn't bad, the effects on the other hand were CGI crap. Another thing that ticked me off was they had to kill them by removing the head, or by damaging the brain. All through the film they show countless little gut stabs that finish off these zombies. So what gives? Maybe it was a time issue or continuity.

Not very good at all. You don't really care what happens after about half of an hour.

With the exception of some lovely Snowdonia locations and a couple of decent costumes, while not the worst zombie movie out there(Vampegeddon, Zombie Night and Dead Men Walking for examples are far worse) Knight of the Dead is a disaster. The special effects are wisely sparsely used but that wasn't an excuse for them to be as cheap as they were- yes even for the budget the movie had, they looked hastily slapped together and made-at-last-minute quality. The gore and decapitations looked silly and felt excessive at times, and there is no better news about the photography and lighting, which takes bleak to extremes to the extent some of the action is not easy to see and there is the very odd effect of the zombies' heads looking like they were floating like balloons. Aside from a couple of the costumes(not all, others did look fancy-dress remains), there was very little sense of the medieval atmosphere or atmosphere in general. The script certainly sounds like a rough draft and has so much cheese it makes the eyes roll. Again it doesn't very little like how medieval speak, a lot of it is very bad modern talk that fails to make sense. The characters are basically archetypes lacking in any kind of personality and development, plus they annoy with how nonsensical a lot of their actions are, and the acting is very going-through-the-motions and mannequin-like from the whole cast with no spontaneity or enthusiasm whatsoever. The worst thing to me was the story, which is so thin it's barely there and it's made worse by a pace that begs for a steroid shot of a very large dosage, some slower-paced scenes barely even move. The scenes with the zombies are very under-populated, the horror is cheaply done and predictable that they are no scares, the movie is far too dull to be fun and it is difficult to be excited when everything just seems so half-hearted. To me as well, the medieval vibe and the use of zombies had a very two different movies feel which was really jarring. To conclude, not the worst zombie movie out there but apart from two halfway-decent things is a disaster. 2/10 Bethany Cox