The Reckoning

Maybe it's because the majority of the cast are relatively unknown, that this film doesn't get the recognition it deserves...but this film is solid. I totally understand that we all perceive movies differently...but giving this movie a 1/10 is just bizarre!

It looks and sounds great...in fact, the score is amazing. Even the music for the closing credits is excellent! A strong female lead and a good supporting cast.

The only issue I have is that for a film set in the 1600's, sometimes the actors say things/behave in a way that's straight out of the 21st century! I won't spoil it and say what these things were, but they certainly seem out of place...and if you're really watching, you'll notice it too.

Overall I really enjoyed it. I'm not really a fan of films set in medieval times, but this and 'A Knight's Tale' are certainly mould breakers.

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.

(Very mild spoilers in the last paragraph)

"Clumsy" is the first word that comes to mind when describing Neil Marshall's disappointingly unambitious Dark Age drama. In recent years we've been spoiled, perhaps, with well-executed female-led period revenge tales; Jennifer Kent's spellbinding The Nightingale was one of the best films of last year, and Mirrah Foulkes' devilish Judy & Punch quickly became a highlight of 2020. It's hard, then, not to compare The Reckoning to other films in recent memory with such superficial similarities, especially when it pales so thoroughly in comparison.

Grace (Charlotte Kirk) kicks us off by laying to rest her husband who has hanged himself on a tree outside their cottage. We learn, through parallel flashbacks, that he contracted "The Sickness" and took his own life to protect his family from the contagion. This sets off a chain of events that leads to Grace being accused of witchcraft by the town's petulant sheriff (Steven Waddington), who calls in a witch hunter to prosecute her (Sean Pertwee, spending the film twirling not only his own mustache but even the mustaches of those around him). What follows is a series of torture scenes, each more uncomfortably unrestrained than the last, interspersed with Grace's increasingly disturbing nightmares. These dream sequences should be the core of the film, as Grace's visions get more introspective and erotic, imagining her husband's embrace shifting into carnal acts with the devil himself. Instead, just like the torture, they never get more interesting even as they grow more graphic.

Every turn the plot takes is a predictable one. Every character is as stock as they come. Kirk, leading the cast and co-writing the script, delivers a bland performance that rarely conveys the suffering Grace endures. Marshall's direction is just as uninspired, with an inconsistent tone and a wobbly handheld camera that sticks to flat planes and textbook compositions. The production design lacks authenticity and the effects, while bloody, carry neither grit nor weight. Supporting performances are almost universally awful, given no help by the broad, clunky dialogue or their paint-by-numbers characterizations. Even Christopher Drake's sweeping score is overshadowed by the Hans Zimmer soundtracks it so clearly tries to evoke.

By the end of The Reckoning, once it's become clear that there's no deeper meaning to explore, no surprising twist to alleviate the gloom and nothing left to do but wait out the runtime, Grace's final revenge feels like less of a resolution and more of a liberation - as she stumbles, victorious, through a marsh, drenched in blood and dragging a broadsword behind her, the audience is equally free to go rewatch Judy & Punch instead.

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.

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.