#2,826. The Reckoning (2020) - The Films of Neil Marshall

 

Director Neil Marshall, the man behind such genre favorites as Dog Soldiers, The Descent, and Doomsday, travels back to 17th century England with his 2020 horror film The Reckoning to spin a tale of pestilence and witchcraft.

When her plague-infected husband Joseph (Joe Anderson) takes his own life, young mother Grace (Charlotte Kirk) finds herself at the whim of their treacherous landlord, Pendleton (Steve Waddington), who tries to pressure Grace into having sex with him. When she refuses, Pendleton accuses Grace of witchcraft and sends for England’s most notorious with hunter, Moorcroft (Sean Pertwee), to question her.

Awaiting Moorcroft’s arrival, Grace is thrown into prison, and while there begins to experience visions of both her dead husband and Lucifer himself (Ian Whyte), who tries to convince a frail Grace that it would be in her best interest to turn her immortal soul over to him.

The Reckoning benefits from a convincing re-creation of the time period, when England was in the throes of the black plague, and Marshall and his team do a fine job conveying the dirt, grime, and disease that was prevalent during this dark era of history.

As for the cast, Charlotte Kirk looks far too glamourous (her hair and make-up are always pristine, making her one of the least convincing “prisoners” to ever inhabit a dank jail cell), but both Sean Pertwee (as the holy man who sees witches everywhere) and his assistant, the badly deformed Ursula (Suzanne Magowan), are convincing as the film’s heavies. And while Marshall and company take a modern approach to the story, making Grace seem more like a feminist crusader than a victim of religious persecution, the scenes in which she is tortured by Moorcroft and Ursula are nonetheless tough to watch.

Unfortunately, The Reckoning has one major failing: the scenes in which Grace encounters Satan. They go absolutely nowhere. I was hoping these sequences might figure into the story somehow, with Satan taking a more active role in Grace’s plight. Being accused of witchcraft was an immediate death sentence in those days, so why not have Grace and the Devil actually enter into an agreement? But it wasn’t to be, and instead we’re left with an ill-advised modern take on a troubling period of history, and a movie that looks a lot better than it plays.
Rating: 5 out of 10

#2,237. Dog Soldiers (2002) - The Films of Neil Marshall

Directed By: Neil Marshall

Starring: Sean Pertwee, Kevin McKidd, Emma Cleasby




Tag line: "Six soldiers. Full moon. No chance"

Trivia: Set in Scotland but filmed in Luxemborg








Years before he discovered underground creatures in The Descent and brought on the apocalypse in Doomsday, writer / director Neil Marshall sent a crack military unit up against some pretty nasty werewolves in 2002’s Dog Soldiers. Packed with wild action sequences and a few scenes of over-the-top gore, Dog Soldiers is a thrill-a-minute monster film, and one hell of a directorial debut.

A team of British soldiers travels deep into the Scottish Highlands to take part in what they believe will be a military exercise. But after discovering the bloody remains of a Special Forces unit the next morning, the squad, led by Sgt. Harry Wells (Sean Pertwee) and his second-in-command Pvt. Cooper (Kevin McKidd), realizes they’re suddenly facing an enemy that’s all too real. After rescuing Capt. Ryan (Liam Cunningham), the Special Forces commander and the only one to survive the attack, Wells and his men take off running, one step ahead of what appears to be a pack of enormous wolves.

Following a brief melee, during which one soldier is killed and Sgt. Wells is injured, the remaining troops make their way to the main road, where they’re picked up by a passing land rover driven by Megan (Emma Cleasby), a zoologist, who takes them to a secluded cottage. According to Megan, the wolves that the unit encountered aren’t animals at all; they’re werewolves. Worse than that, they’re hungry werewolves, and when these lycanthropic enemies surround the cottage later that evening, the result is a night of chaos that those lucky enough to survive won’t soon forget.

Unlike most independent monster films, which tend to conceal their creatures until the very end, Dog Soldiers gives us a good look at its werewolves early on, and continues to do so throughout the movie. The reason for this is obvious: the werewolves, brought to life by special make-up effects supervisor Dave Bonneywell and his crew, look damn good, and the more we see them, the creepier they become (each is a few feet taller than their human adversaries, and their appetite for human flesh is never satiated). This leads to several violent encounters between the lycanthropes (which, like most hungry predators, attack frequently) and the soldiers (who transform the tiny cottage into an impressive stronghold), with each new assault more bloody than the last.

This, combined with a superb cast (especially Sean Pertwee as Sgt. Wells, who, during their first night in the wilderness, tells his men an unforgettable story) and a handful of gory scenes, helped make Dog Soldiers the first truly great werewolf film of the new millennium.

#1,378. Doomsday (2008) - The Films of Neil Marshall

Directed By: Neil Marshall

Starring: Rhona Mitra, Bob Hoskins, Alexander Siddig




Tag line: "Mankind has an expiration date"

Trivia: Scottish Screen contributed 300,000 pounds towards the film's budget







Drawing influence from such movies as Mad Max and Escape from New York, director Neil Marshall’s 2008 film Doomsday is an action extravaganza.

A deadly new virus, nicknamed the “Reaper”, is spreading like wildfire through Scotland, leaving tens of thousands dead in its wake. Hoping to contain the virus, England constructs a huge wall that essentially cuts the island in half, ensuring nobody, whether infected or not, will ever leave Scotland again.

Flash forward 27 years; everyone north of the wall is believed dead, while those in the south suffer from overcrowding and a higher-than-normal unemployment rate. To make matters worse, a police raid in the Whitechapel District of London turns up evidence that the Reaper virus is back!  It’s at this point the Prime Minister of England (Alexander Siddig) and his second-in-command, Canaris (David O’Hara), share some startling information with security chief Bill Nelson (Bob Hoskins): For the past 3 years, satellite photos taken in the north have revealed that not everyone on the other side of the wall is dead. Hoping to give their political careers a much-needed boost, the Prime Minister and Canaris ask Nelson to send his best operative into Scotland to look for a doctor named Kane (Malcolm McDowell), who they believe has developed a cure for the virus. For this difficult mission, Nelson selects Maj. Eden Sinclair (Rhona Mitra), who, as a young girl, was saved when her mother, a Scot, arranged for her safe passage to England. With only 48 hours to find Kane, Maj. Sinclair leads a squad of mercenaries into the north, but as she and her team will soon discover, those who’ve managed to survive aren’t going to welcome them with open arms.

Doomsday is a balls-to-the-wall action movie that gets crazier (and more intense) with each passing scene. Initially unsure of how many survivors there are, or that they'd even be able to find one, Sinclair and her team, while searching the hospital where Kane was headquartered, are taken by surprise and captured by the followers of a madman named Sol (Caig Conway), who gets a kick out of torturing people (Sol burns a member of Sinclair’s squad to death, then has him carved up and served for dinner). With the help of fellow prisoner Cally (MyAnna Buring), who happens to be Sol’s sister, Sinclair and a few others manage to escape. Eventually, they do find Dr. Kane, only to discover he’s every bit as crazy as Sol (he and his minions reside in an ancient castle, living as if it were still the Middle Ages. In one exciting scene, Knox, who's set himself up as a king, forces Sinclair to do battle with a knight in shining armor). There’s even a car chase towards the end of the film that looks like it was lifted straight out of The Road Warrior!

At times, Doomsday is so over-the-top that it feels more like a parody than an homage, but don’t let that fool you: this picture is deadly serious, and, with its plethora of high-octane scenes, is a film that’s sure to satisfy most genre fans.

#930. The Descent (2005) - The Films of Neil Marshall

Directed By: Neil Marshall

Starring: Shauna Macdonald, Natalie Mendoza, Alex Reid





Tag line: "The Scariest Movie In Earth"

Trivia: Shauna MacDonald is slightly claustrophobic so she found it easy to act scared and panicky while underground






Neil Marshall has been a godsend for genre fans. 

During his brief career, he’s already written and directed a werewolf movie (Dog Soldiers), a balls-out action flick (Doomsday) and a film about ancient warfare (the entertaining yet flawed Centurion). 

In addition to these, Marshall was also responsible for one of my favorite horror offerings of the new millennium, 2005’s The Descent, a creature feature that manages to get our skin crawling well before its monsters even turn up.

After months of grieving for her husband and daughter, both of whom were killed in a car accident that she herself survived, Sarah (Shauna MacDonald) agrees to accompany a group of friends on a weekend adventure. 

Led by Juno (Natalie Mendoza), the most reckless of the bunch, Sarah and pals Beth (Alex Reid), Rebecca (Saskia Mulder), Sam (Myanna Buring) and Holly (Nora-Jane Noone) enter a cave situated in the Appalachian Mountains and begin the long journey underground. 

But what starts as a bonding exercise soon turns into a nightmare when a portion of the cave collapses behind them. It’s at this point Juno confesses that she switched their destination, and, for the thrill of it all, led them into a cavern that has never been charted. What’s more, she didn’t tell the local authorities where they were going, meaning potential rescuers won’t even know where to look for them! 

Trapped miles below ground, the ladies’ weekend from hell soon gets a whole lot worse with the discovery that they are not alone in the cave; it's inhabited by a race of carnivorous humanoids! 

With no idea where the exit is (or if there even is one), Sarah and the others do their best to avoid the hungry creatures as they search for a way out.

The subterranean species that haunts the lead characters in The Descent is damn creepy, with pale skin, voracious appetites, and the uncanny ability to sneak up on their prey in the dark. Yet well before we’re introduced to these monsters, director Marshall has already brought us to the edge of our seats with a few early jump scares (including one involving hundreds of bats), not to mention a general feeling of uneasiness as Sarah and the others snake through narrow underground passageways, often unaware of what’s waiting for them on the other side. 

To add to the tension, there’s also plenty of internal conflict within the group, including a bit of a history between Juno and Sarah’s late husband, Paul (Oliver Milburn), that only Beth knows about. By the time the monsters finally make their grand entrance, we’ve already chewed off half of our fingernails!

This combination of creatures and claustrophobia proves a winning one, working in unison to transform The Descent into the most consistently unnerving horror film of the last 10 years.

#203. Centurion (2010) - The Films of Neil Marshall

Directed By: Neil Marshall

Starring: Michael Fassbender, Dominic West, Olga Kurylenko




Tag line: "History is written in blood"

Trivia: Temperatures would frequently sink to below 0 degrees Celsius in the Inverness Mountains. Indeed the temperature was -5 degrees Celsius (along with a blizzard) on the first day of filming

Roman history fascinates me. I've read a bunch of books on the subject, and there was a time when I could recite the names of every Roman Emperor from Augustus to Septimius Severus. It's an interest that extends to movies and television as well (my favorite TV mini-series is the BBC's 1976 production of I, Claudius), so going in, Neil Marshall's Centurion had all the makings of a movie I would absolutely love.

Turns out I only like it.

The year is 117 A.D., the setting: Northern Britain. Quintus Dias (Michael Fassbinder), a Centurion in the Roman Army, is held prisoner by a Pict tribe, which captured him after massacring an entire Roman outpost. Rescued from his captivity by the army of General Titus Flavius Virilus (Dominic West), Dias, who no longer has a legion of his own, joins the 9th under Virilus' command. As luck would have it, he's just in time to march with his new compatriots back into the Northern regions, where, guided by a mute native girl named Etain (Olga Kurylenko), they hope to squash, once and for all, the Pict “barbarians”. Alas, Etain turns out to be a traitor, and leads the 9th straight into an ambush. The entire Legion decimated, Dias, with a handful of survivors in tow, must make his way back to the Roman-controlled south before he, too, becomes a casualty of war.

There's quite a bit to like about Centurion, not the least of which is its stunning cinematography. There are a number of breathtaking aerial shots that show off the Scottish countryside, and even when the landscape is grim and gloomy (there's plenty of fog in this movie, and a whole lot of wintry weather), it's still a sight to behold. The cat-and-mouse chase, with Dias and his men only a few short steps ahead of the Picts at any given moment, is also a plus. These elements, combined with a handful of superior battle sequences, do their part to make Centurion an entertaining film.

Unfortunately, the movie has one huge drawback as well: it's reliance on CGI blood. As you'd expect from an action movie that takes place in Roman times, Centurion is a violent movie, with gore aplenty, but much of the effect is ruined by the filmmaker's decision to use CGI for several scenes of bloodletting. A sword severing a limb or an ax crashing down on someone's head occasionally sends out a spatter of CGI plasma, which looks every bit like computer-generated blood. I was honestly amazed at how awful it is, and there were times it proved a real distraction, often ruining what was an otherwise effective battle sequence.

Neil Marshall impressed the hell out of me with his first three films (Dog Soldiers in 2002, The Descent in 2005, and Doomsday in 2008), and I was genuinely thrilled when I heard he was making a movie set in Roman times.

Sure, Centurion is a good film, but dammit...I had my heart set on a great one!