3 out of 5

Director: Christopher Smith

Black Death was, first and foremost, underwhelming. …But in the best possible way. A good start to a review, yeah? Director Christopher Smith has taken some interesting stabs at different types of suspense / horror with his prior films, and Black Death plunges into the darkness of a period piece. The film is mainly about its title – the plague. It chooses to focus on a church-appointed group of knights led by Sean Bean who need a guide to take them to an isolated town purported to be untouched by the sickness. For this they pick up monk Eddie Redmayne. Early into the travel, the monk is told that the reason for the quest is that the untouched village is believed to be under the guidance of nefarious demons – as the plague was most certainly sent by God – and so must be, essentially, destroyed. Since the whole movie is about developing a mood, and mindset (up through the, frankly, brilliant epilogue), its almost unfair to giveaway any further details about the characters. And thats what makes and breaks this movie. The acting is – phenomenal. The problem with many period pieces is that they play to certain film tropes – so you have comedic characters, or serious moments, or dramatic revelations – that all fit a reliable beat in the movie. Black Death doesnt do that. You get a full sense of these characters through many subtleties, and parts that could be played for more action or more comedy or even more terror are allowed to happen naturally and believably. So you recognize Sean Bean but damn if the movie doesnt seem to be real, and Bean not an actor. It is because of this that I sense this movie will become more rewarding on repeated viewings… but on first watch, your movie sensibilities keep telling you to expect something. Some things definitely happen, and it is the plot, but oddly it is not the focus of whats going on, and thus that underwhelming 3-star feeling.