No, that’s not an old still from Lord of the Rings, that’s Sean Bean in Black Death, dealing with the bubonic plague after its first outbreak.
Bean stars as Ulric, a grim emissary from the Church, who leads a young monk (Eddie Redmayne) and a band of violent vigilantes and war veterans through the English countryside. Armed with blood-chilling torture devices, their mission is to stamp out suspected paganism in a village that remains untouched by the black plague, even as the rest of Europe grimly succumbs to the pestilence.
Black Death just made its U.S. debut at last week’s Screamfest, taking home some of the major awards- Best Director (Chris Smith), Best Actor (Sean Bean), Best Cinematography (Sebastian Edschmid) and Best Musical Score (Christian Henson) Screamfest has been good to Magnet Releasing, as they’ve nabbed up The Troll Hunter, Brad “Session 9” Anderson’s Vanishing on 7th Street and now Black Death from it.
Director of the film Chris Smith is the man behind Severence, a fun if forgettable flick that at least had one absolutely amazing sight gag. “Black Death is a film that I am immensely proud of, and I’m so pleased it has found such a great home for its US release,” said director Smith in a press release. “On the one hand it is a violent historical drama and on the other, a terrifying horror movie, in which the more realistically I shot the past, the more it reflected the present. A time when in spite of the fact people were dying of the plague, they still found the time to torture and kill each other.”
