The Reckoning

Neil Marshall pictured 'The Reckoning' being shot in an English winter, all rain and grey skies, and ended up filming it in Hungary at the height of summer 2019. It marked a return to lower budget horror for the director of 'Dog Soldiers' and 'The Descent' after his 'Hellboy' flopped, and he cowrote it with Charlotte Kirk, his partner and the film's star.

England, 1665. As the Great Plague spreads across the country, Grace Haverstock loses her husband, Joseph, and is left alone with their newborn daughter. Unable to pay the rent, she turns down the advances of her landlord, Squire Pendleton, who takes his revenge by accusing her of witchcraft in front of neighbours whom fear of the sickness has made suspicious.

Her judge is John Moorcroft, England's most ruthless witch hunter, who locks her up and puts her through one torture after another to force a confession. Grace won't admit to something she hasn't done, but in her cell the visions begin, and the Devil himself starts working his way into her mind. Holding out is no longer just a matter of what her body can take.

Kirk leads a cast in which Marshall regular Sean Pertwee plays Moorcroft, Steven Waddington the squire and Joe Anderson the husband, while Ian Whyte plays Lucifer. Most of it was shot on Ian Bailie's sets at Fót Studios, outside Budapest. It premiered at Fantasia in August 2020 and played FrightFest that October.

Reviews were largely negative. Many critics felt it wallowed in the torture of its heroine, the very thing it claimed to condemn, and compared it unfavourably with 'The Witch'; a few defended its visual punch and its feminist reading. It opened in the US in February 2021, reached UK screens that April and joined Shudder in May.

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