Christopher Smith’s Black Death is the kind of film that takes a long, hard look at religion, faith, and morality—then dunks them all into a muddy pit, ties them to a few horses, and pulls until something breaks. It’s a movie that dares to ask: “What if The Seventh Seal had more entrails and Sean Bean glared at everyone like they owed him an apology?”
Set in 1348, during the bubonic plague, Black Death is a medieval fever dream that combines grimy realism, existential dread, and a surprising amount of sword-swinging swagger. It’s historical horror at its filthiest and finest—a movie so bleak it makes Game of Thrones look like a Renaissance fair for emotionally stable people.
⚔️ The Holy Men and the Horribly Dead
Our protagonist is Osmund (Eddie Redmayne, back when his face still looked capable of hope), a young monk torn between his faith in God and his desire for a woman named Averill (Kimberley Nixon). Their secret love affair makes Romeo and Juliet look like Tinder amateurs—especially since Osmund’s idea of romance involves a lot of guilt and candlelit prayers for forgiveness.
But when the plague hits the monastery, Osmund’s prayers are answered—not by God, but by Sean Bean.
Enter Ulric, the bishop’s envoy, who arrives looking like a man who’s seen the apocalypse and didn’t care for the décor. He and his motley crew of holy thugs are heading to a mysterious village untouched by the plague—a place rumored to be led by a necromancer. Osmund, mistaking Bean’s grim face for divine providence, joins the expedition as their guide.
Spoiler alert: God is not the one sending signs on this trip.
🐀 A Road Trip Through Hell (and Mud)
The first half of Black Death plays like The Dirty Dozen if they replaced the Nazis with fleas and replaced the humor with dysentery. The soldiers—played by a glorious lineup of British character actors with names like Wolfstan, Mold, and Swire—are the kind of men who could make a roast pig feel undercooked. They bicker, they philosophize, they die horribly.
Smith’s direction here is pure mud-soaked poetry. Every scene is steeped in filth—wet leaves, rusty armor, and the kind of damp that could kill a bishop. You can practically smell the medieval hygiene, which is to say: you can smell everything.
As the group trudges toward the cursed village, they face ambushes, corpses, and increasingly awkward theological debates. It’s like The Canterbury Tales if Chaucer had been really into torture porn.
💀 Welcome to the Village of Cheerful Death
When the party finally reaches the plague-free village, things go from grim to “oh dear God, what is that smell?”
They’re greeted by Hob (Tim McInnerny, looking like a man who’s lost a few bets with Lucifer) and Langiva (Carice van Houten), a serene woman with cheekbones sharp enough to deflect a crossbow bolt. She claims peace and healing. The soldiers, being medieval Christians, naturally assume witchcraft.
They’re right, of course—but not in the way they think.
The villagers welcome them with smiles, ale, and suspiciously good lighting. Then they get everyone drunk, tie them up in a mud pit, and start demanding renunciations of faith. It’s less of a sermon and more of a medieval TED Talk hosted by Satan.
When one of the soldiers refuses, he’s crucified and disemboweled—a scene that manages to be both revolting and weirdly elegant, like Monty Python’s Life of Brian if directed by Lars von Trier.
Sean Bean, naturally, takes it all like a man who’s been preparing to die in movies since the womb.
🙏 Faith, Flesh, and Fatalism
Black Death is, at its festering heart, a movie about belief—and what happens when belief meets reality and loses both eyes. Every character is clinging to something: Osmund to love, Ulric to righteousness, Langiva to rebellion. The result is a philosophical knife fight where nobody wins and everyone bleeds.
Langiva’s reveal—that the village’s plague-free miracle is just isolation and superstition—hits like a slap from a nun with brass knuckles. She’s not a witch, just a woman using fear to control men who desperately want to believe in something. In other words, she’s basically organized religion with better skincare.
When Osmund realizes he’s murdered the woman he loved because of a false resurrection ritual, his faith crumbles faster than a communion wafer in holy water. And that, dear reader, is what we call character development.
⚰️ The Bean Ultimatum
Sean Bean gives one of his most Sean Bean performances here. He’s stoic, noble, and perpetually two minutes away from dying horribly for someone else’s sins. Ulric’s final stand—strapped to horses and quartered—is pure cinema.
But before he’s ripped into four equal parts, he delivers the film’s best moment: a grim smile and the revelation that he’s brought the plague with him. It’s the medieval equivalent of dropping the mic, if the mic were made of bubonic pus.
“Rejoice,” his eyes seem to say as the villagers panic. “Your faith is rewarded—with pestilence!”
Ulric dies as he lived: unrepentant, infectious, and metal as hell.
🔥 The Birth of a Monster
The real genius of Black Death is its ending. Osmund survives, but his soul doesn’t. When we last see him, years later, he’s become a fanatic witch-hunter—executing women he believes to be Langiva reincarnated.
It’s the perfect dark punchline: the innocent monk becomes the very monster his faith warned him about. If you were expecting redemption, you clearly haven’t seen a British medieval film. The only thing that gets redeemed here is the budget through creative use of fog machines.
It’s bleak, brilliant, and deeply funny in the kind of way that makes you feel bad for laughing.
🩸 Aesthetic Apocalypse
Visually, the film is stunning. The forest scenes look like oil paintings smeared with despair. The village feels both pastoral and post-apocalyptic. Everything is drenched in color so muted it’s practically whispering, “Everyone here is doomed.”
The score, too, hums with tension—like Gregorian chants performed by people who know they’re about to be burned alive. It’s immersive, atmospheric, and slightly masochistic.
And somehow, amid the entrails and moral decay, Black Death finds moments of strange beauty. The camera lingers on the mist. The wind carries the screams. You half expect God Himself to appear, only to shake His head and say, “You people are exhausting.”
⚙️ Final Thoughts: God Bless the Grim
Black Death is a masterpiece of misery—a film that treats faith like a medieval disease and still manages to look gorgeous doing it. It’s bleakly funny, philosophically sharp, and unapologetically violent. Think The Name of the Rose meets The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, with fewer books and more plague pustules.
It’s the rare horror film that doesn’t rely on jump scares or cheap shocks, but on the slow realization that nobody—absolutely nobody—is right. Not the believers. Not the skeptics. Not even the guy with the sword and the scowl.
In a world drowning in superstition, Black Death is the cinematic equivalent of a fever dream told by a monk with blood under his fingernails.
Final Verdict: 4.5 out of 5 Diseased Rats.
Come for Sean Bean’s heroic suffering. Stay for the theological despair. Leave questioning everything, especially that strange rash you got halfway through.
