DVD Review: ‘BLACK DEATH’

Magnolia Home Entertainment brings home Black Death on May 10th on DVD and Blu-Ray.  The year is 1348, Europe has fallen under the shadow of the Black Death.  As the plague decimates all in its path, fear and superstition are rife.  There are rumors of a village hidden in marshland that the plague cannot reach.  There is even talk of a necromancer who leads the village and is able to bring the dead back to life.  Ulric (Sean Bean), a fearsome knight, is charged by the Church to investigate these rumors.  Joined by a young monk and a small consort of soldiers, the journey ahead will lead them into the heart of darkness where faith is challenged and put to the ultimate test.  Beyond the break, we let you know if you should add this to your DVD & Blu-Ray shelves.

 

The Movie:

Nyquill previously wrote up a review during the theatrical/video-on-demand of the film here.

With this film and the HBO series Game of Thrones, I sometimes wonder if Sean Bean (who most people know via The Fellowship of the Ring as he played Boromir) is always dressed in armor.  He appears in his famous garb in Black Death which is Christopher Smith’s (Creep, Severance, Triangle) newest entry into horror.  It is not a straight out horror film, but definitely contains the horrific element of the Black Plague.

The film is solid.  While it does take a while for our men on a mission, and that is what it what type of film it feels like for the first 30 minutes, to get to the supernatural part of the story, Smith does a fantastic job with our characters and putting you into a time when God was a force of many decision making.  The setting is bleak, as you would expect, and holds very little hope.  As you find out early on in the film, our lead character played by Eddie Redmayne is a monk named Osmund who joins these soldiers to navigate through a forest that he is familiar with but also realizes that this is an opportunity to meet up with a woman who he had recently sent away from the monastery.  This is the only hope that Osmund has as he believes in his faith even if he believes that falling in love with this woman might be a sin.  It becomes an interesting point later on in the film as he is put to the ultimate test of his faith.

Black Death is one of the better entries into gothic horror, especially as of late.

Video:

The video transfer is well done.  While it does look a little dark, I believe this is most of the cinematography used.  We only received the DVD and not the Blu-Ray, but from what I see here, the film is fairly represented.  The film doesn’t feature a lot of color.  Everything is in warm, bleached out tones in the daylight.  During nighttime scenes, especially the scene with the soldiers and the monk around the campfire, are probably the best time to see true flesh tones.  Again, I don’t believe this to be a technical problem, this is the way the film was supposed to look.

Audio:

The only audio track on this DVD is the Dolby Digital 5.1 track.  There is no commentary track, which is kind of a disappointment as I’m personally always interested to hear how everything was pulled off, especially in period films.  The audio sounds level at times with some low drones and booms for dramatic effect or end of scenes.  The sword fight scene in the woods sounds robust and the way it should be.  The exterior soundtrack of the film fills all five channels and since the majority of this film takes place outdoors, that makes it pretty important.

Extras:

Deleted Scenes, a few interviews with the cast and crew, along with a couple of featurettes and Behind the Scenes footage and the Original Theatrical trailer round out the extras.  It would have been interesting to see some more Behind the Scenes footage, but it was nice to get what we got.

 

 

Movie Rating:

DVD Rating: