The Reckoning

This is how I feel sometimes. Even more so now that I got confirmation that quite a lot of my previews reviews have been taken of imdb. I have no idea why - and I am not sure if it is good to know (someone reported them or they just got lost). Because either way it is bad and kind of sad.

This was one of the movies that I have to re-write my review for. I will save my reviews from now on, but it won't help too much if I don't know when and which review has been taken off. Not knowing why and what brings us to the movie. Because our main character here is being accused of things ...mainly because she is a woman and because she does not want to have anything to do with another male. So you know what he is going to accuse her of ... crazy times for women back then.

The movie is well acted, while it does try to avoid cliches as much as possible. Overall this is quite decent and I might even consider giving this a 7 one of these days. Maybe after a re-watch.

I had virtually no idea what I sat down to watch, as I happened to get the opportunity to watch the 2020 movie "The Reckoning". But the movie's cover had some appeal to it, and since I hadn't already seen the movie, of course I managed to find the time to do so.

Well, "The Reckoning" definitely had potential to be something unique and interesting, yet amazingly enough then writers Neil Marshall, Charlotte Kirk and Edward Evers-Swindell managed to produce only a lukewarm script that offered little in terms of a storyline that ensorcelled the audience. Sure, "The Reckoning" is watchable, but it is a very bland and highly forgettable movie.

The storyline in "The Reckoning" was one that had so much to offer, yet the writers failed entirely to seize the material readily available within hands reach and let director Neil Marshall bring something truly worthwhile to the screen. The end result is a very mediocre movie about alleged witchery and plague set during the year of 1665.

Visually, then "The Reckoning" wasn't lacking anything. There were a great many sets, scenes, props and costumes, which definitely helped to build a world set in 1665. But the lack of an interesting and captivating storyline just made it all seem so futile.

The characters in the movie had lots of potential to be grown and nurtured into full-fledged characters with many aspects to them, but again, the writers were just not delivering where it mattered. And this resulted in most of the characters coming off on the screen as being superficial and rather one-dimensional characters.

Now, it should be said that acting in the movie was actually fairly good, especially when taking into consideration the severe limitations imposed on the actors and actresses by a lack of proper script and having half-written characters to work with. It should be mentioned that Charlotte Kirk (playing Grace Haverstock), Sean Pertwee (playing John Moorcroft) and Steven Waddington (playing Squire Pendleton) definitely put on great performances, just a shame it was done within such a mediocre movie.

While I managed to sit through the entire movie, this movie was not one that rang overly entertaining, nor is it a movie that I would recommend you rushing out to get a copy of - because it just wasn't that good. My rating of the movie settles on a very mediocre and bland five out of ten stars.

Yup, this is a bad film, made worse because it clearly had a decent budget, films with a quarter of the budget are better. First our lead speaks as if she has just left RADA, her make-up and hair are all neatly done. The clothes she wears are all machine stitched, not to mention always clean, surprisingly difficult living on a farm in 1665.

It carries on like that throughout the film. The dialogue is appalling, so bad you wonder if a child wrote it. As for the story, well it's laughable bad. However it's the acting that is cringe worthy, Charlotte Kirk is rancid bad and is only in the role as her other-half is director Neil Marshall. If the name does ring-a-bell, Kirk is the 'actress' who had affairs with the CEO of Warner Bros and Vice-Chairman of NBCUniversal.

To think this is the same director who gave us Dog Soldiers, how times change.

Not very impressed with this.

A woman is accused of witchcraft while struggling in the aftermath of her husband committing suicide.

This story, setting and effects need some work. I assume this is a film that had a smaller budget but some of the small things that bugged me didn't seem like they would've been too much of an expense. Let's start with how incredibly clean this supposed plague infested town was. Sure, there were some corpses here and there and there were rats but the streets were clean, the establishments were clean and it just totally lacked realism. Where were the wagon and horse worn, muddy streets? Where was the hay, dirt and come to think of it why were the rats so clean? Why was our main actress's face always impeccable? I'm sorry but I just take issue with these things. On terms of all it lacked in this regard, it seemed more like I was watching a stage play.

The effects were CGI stuff and, well, you could tell it.

I wanted to like this so much more but it just fell really short of being worth a lot of investment. The only thing that makes me give it 3 Stars is the fact that I have seen worse.

This is an ok film, certainly not a 1/10! I really like Neil Marshall films, The Descent, Doomsday, Dog Soldiers, you can always feel the common directorial style.

It's not a patch on these but it's still reasonable and definitely worth a watch. Sean Pertwee as the witchfinder is terrific, let's face it he's always consistently good.

You could say this is a bit of a modern day reboot of The Witchfinder General with Vincent Price. The lead actress is pretty good, as is pretty much the whole cast. I won't say too much, just watch it and enjoy it.