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.

5 seconds in I was distracted by the actress's hair and makeup. Lol 1665. Watched it to the end and nothing redeeming about this movie. Slow and plodding with 1 hour 45 minute runtime. Could have been 80 minutes and still too long.

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.

I watched about 30 minutes of this before I had to stop. There was no redeeming factor to keep my interest alive at all. The actors were flat, the costumes appeared fake, and the pace of the movie was so slow, that I would rather have watched CSPAN.

This was a huge let down as Neil Marshal has directed quality movies in the past.

Watch at your own risk

[3/10]

(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.