The Reckoning (2020) – A Movie A Day 2021 #39
The Reckoning (2020) – A Movie A Day 2021 #39
Today’s movie was initially chosen while looking for a newer horror movie in an attempt at doing better at keeping up with recently released films. I only watched a few newer movies in January, so I want to make a stronger effort to keep up. As I was looking around at what’s come out lately, I discovered that writer/director Neil Marshall’s latest, The Reckoning, released on video on demand just a few days ago. My decision was instantly made.
I became a fan of Neil Marshall when I saw Dog Soldiers back around 2002, and I became a huge fan of his after The Descent in 2005. The Descent is still my favorite of his followed closely by Dog Soldiers and Doomsday (I haven’t seen Centurion), but I haven’t been able to add to my Neil-Marshall-movie-rankings list for a very long time. Sure, he directed Hellboy in 2019 (which I enjoyed), but as far as the movies he’s written and directed, he hasn’t put one out since 2010. That is, until The Reckoning debuted last year amid the theater-less world of the pandemic. I’m sad I didn’t get to see Marshall’s latest on the big screen, but I’m overjoyed that I just finished watching it at home! Where does it fall on my list? It doesn’t topple my top two, but given time I think it could fight for the third spot.
The Reckoning is set in England in 1665 during the England witch trials while the bubonic plague was wreaking havoc across the land. The film follows a woman named Grace whose husband contracts the plague and kills himself to prevent the inevitability that he will pass it along to his wife and baby girl. Grace is then accused of being a witch by the lecherous and conniving squire who owns the land Grace and her family live on, and the rest of the film follows Grace is she is tortured in an attempt to get her confess to entering into a pact with the Devil. Grace’s will is strong, but the mental and physical strains she endures push her will to the breaking point.
One thing I really enjoy about Neil Marshall is the tone of his movies. He approaches them seriously, but his directness can sometimes be blunt to the point of campiness. I think that’s most apparent in the utter ridiculousness of Doomsday, but I can see bits of it in The Reckoning as well. There’s a scene where the squire that accuses Grace voices his concerns to a bunch of people in a pub, and the whole scene is almost comical in how things quickly escalate. The squire tosses out the bait, end everyone almost immediately chimes in with some variation of “now that you mention it, I saw her once and then a bad thing happened one day so she must be a witch.” Subtlety is thrown out the door, and the idea of mob mentality, something you can build a whole movie around, is summarized in about a minute and a half. It’s great in its own way, and I enjoy it.
Marshall is also unsubtle with his flair for blood and violence. The Reckoning is a violent movie and there are a few graphicly bloody shots scattered throughout, but I appreciate that it’s not all focused on the torture of Grace. Most of Grace’s torture happens off screen (at least, the physical acts of torture), and we often just see the bloody aftermath. The best/worst of the blood and gore is reserved for the people who really deserve it. Decapitations, crushed heads, multiple stabbings, and more happen on-screen in a way that makes you want to cheer rather than squirm. Mostly.
I enjoyed the cast as well. Charlotte Kirk plays Grace, and she pulls off a great combination of vulnerability and strength. Steven Waddington is sufficiently scummy as the squire, but the better bad guy in the movie is Sean Pertwee as John Moorcroft, a witch hunter. Pertwee is maybe best known as Alfred in the Gotham TV series, but he’s worked with Neil Marshall before in Dog Soldiers. He also played Smith in one of my favorite outer-space horror movies, Event Horizon. Pertwee has a feeling of proper menace throughout the movie, and I wanted to see Grace get revenge on him more than anyone else.
The final act of the movie turns into a bit of an action/revenge film, and that’s pretty much what I was hoping for. Again, Neil Marshall is not subtle. The Reckoning is not an A24 arthouse movie about witches, it’s a sometimes campy, often violent genre film about sweet, sweet revenge. Is is historically accurate? Probably not. Did I enjoy it? Absolutely. Hopefully Neil Marshall won’t take another ten years to write and direct another movie.