Rent The Reckoning (2020)

Are there no end to her talents? (Spoilers follow...) - The Reckoning review by NP

You’re not to worry too much about period detail and accuracy in this ridiculous but entertainingly grim film.

Visually, this is superb. There’s a Dario Argento flavour to the rich colour canvas used by director Neil Marshall (who co-wrote this with leading actress Charlotte Kirk). Things are briskly paced too, sometimes too much during important scenes (the Squire’s lacing of one character’s drink in a fairly crucial bar scene, for one; blink and you’ll miss it). The 106 minute running time never stands still for long.

Despite this, some explanations might have helped my appreciation. Does heroine Grace hallucinate that she sees, and gets intimate with, the devil, or is he real? There’s a scene that indicates that his night-time visits might be real, but as Grace is closely guarded at all times and no-one notices anything out of the ordinary, this is far from clear.

If this is about female empowerment, it doesn’t convince because Grace’s Herculean recovery from the relentless and staggered punishments she receives are preposterous. She suffers nothing more than a slight limp which doesn’t impede her overpowering various powerful people and freeing prisoners. At the end, I wondered – jokingly – if she was going to swim across the lengthy moat as well. Blow me, she did! An alternative view is that she was indeed willed to survive by the demon, which would make sense, but doesn’t do a lot to underline her own strength.

The torture she endures never quite makes the us hide behind our hands because we’re spared truly graphic scenes – but we’re left in doubt exactly what will happen to her, as it is often described in loving detail by terrific villains Moorcroft (Sean Pertwee) and The Squire (Stephen Waddington).

This is a ‘Witchfinder General’-type film given the 2021 ‘final girl’ treatment. Whilst Grace looks every inch a modern day lass and her physical prowess under the circumstances is ludicrous, I had a good time with this. It’s colourful, has some terrific imagery and displays some committed acting. My score is 7 out of 10.

Awful, Clumsy and Silly Hammer Style Horror - The Reckoning review by GI

This attempt by director Neil Marshall to homage the B movie Hammer Horrors of the 60s is a dismal failure and at times quite an unpleasant and offensive film. It makes little sense, has a terrible script and may just make you seethe with anger for being so awful. Marshall has really sunk in aspiration since his really good Dog Soldiers (2002) and The Descent (2005) with this mishmash of gory horror and devil worship. Charlotte Kirk, terribly wooden, plays Grace who is grieving after her husband commits suicide having contracted the plague in Seventeenth Century England. When she rejects the advances of the local squire (Steven Waddington) he accuses her of witchcraft which cues Witchfinder (Sean Pertwee) to spend an hour of the film torturing her. But despite being stabbed, whipped and having a device inserted inside her vagina that expands to cause grievous injury Grace still manages to recover enough to go on the rampage for the film's dull climax. Even the Devil pops up to give her a naked cuddle just so we can look at Kirk's bum for another minute or so. Don't waste your time with this, it's dire.