05 Feb 2021
If you’ve ever dreamed of a film where Sean Pertwee rides a horse in slow motion, wearing a huge hat, to a booming organ score and, frankly, who hasn’t? then
The Reckoning is for you. Neil Marshall’s first film since his lacklustre
Hellboy adaptation sees the filmmaker return to British-based, small-scale horror (and Pertwee). Pulling a fictional yarn out of both the Great Plague and the English 17th-century witch hunts,
The Reckoning follows a recently widowed mother falsely accused of being in league with the devil. Marshall’s approach eschews both the grim, compelling qualities of the similarly themed
The British witch hunt thriller “The Reckoning” is a well-meaning, but consistently staid horror movie about institutionalized misogyny, and the women who have to survive it. Set in 1665, which an opening credit tells us is the “year of the great plague,” “The Reckoning” follows Grace Haverstock (Charlotte Kirk, who co-wrote the movie with director Neil Marshall), a newly widowed mother who is accused, imprisoned, and tortured for imaginary crimes of witchcraft.
Grace’s accusers are all vicious humanoid cardboard cut-outs, and her trials are all obviously gross without ever being enlightening or varied enough to also be relentless. I’m often an apologist for this sort of neo-grindhouse genre exercise, whose tired horror-fantasy tropes over-stress the cyclical nature of real world injustice, but “The Reckoning” isn’t mean or uplifting enough to warrant much of a defense.
The Reckoning : Review: Neil Marshall Returns to Traditional Horror With Routine Tale of Witch-Hunting
The film s punchy visuals are undercut by a meandering story that strains credibility.
Richard Kuipers, provided by
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Director: Neil Marshall
With: Charlotte Kirk, Sean Pertwee, Steven Waddington, Joe Anderson, Suzanna Magowan, Sarah Lambie, Ian Whyte, Callum Goulden, Leon Ockenden, Emma Campbell Jones, Mark Ryan, Bill Fellows, Oliver Trevena.
Running time: Running time: 111 MIN.
Courtesy of RLJE Films
Following the misfire of 2019’s “Hellboy” reboot, “The Descent” director Neil Marshall returns to his traditional horror roots with “The Reckoning,” an uneven melodrama about an innocent young widow accused of witchcraft during the Great Plague of London, 1665. Striving to be a rousing tale of female empowerment in the face of brutal patriarchy and religious extremism, “The Reckoning” has some powerful moments but relies too heavily on fa