Black Death: Film Review

3:59 PM PST 3/8/2011 by Kirk Honeycutt

Horror filmmaker Christopher Smith plays with the notion of necromancers and demons lurking within the pestilence, but winds up retreating into a kind of historical morality tale.

You can’t quarrel with that title, Black Death. The film is black all right, pitch black, and death is everywhere. The story is set in 1348, after all, when the plague began to sweep through Europe, decimating its populace by as much as half and spreading panic to every corner. Yet what a strange land for a horror filmmaker to pitch camp in since he has little to add when horror is a fact of everyday life. Sure enough, Christopher Smith (Creep, Severance) plays with the notion of necromancers and demons lurking within the pestilence, but winds up retreating into a kind of historical morality tale told with documentary flourishes and a grim attraction to violence and cruelty.