Rating: 3/5
Cumbria 1348 A young boy named Griffin looks to the sky. The moon gives him visions of men tossing torches and digging into the earth. The church bells ring. Someone jumps from the steeple.
Connor brings news of The Black Death — far worse than the villagers can imagine.
All the churches are empty. And still not satisfied, the evil keeps striding forward with each full moon.
The village believes their only hope is to place a cross on the steeple of the biggest church in all of Christendom. To do so is to ask god for his protection.
Griffin has a vision of the pit and it reaching far away from where they are. With few options left, they decide to go down it and see if it will take them to the church.
On the other side, they find a city unlike anything they’ve seen.
Despite being and looking low-budget, this film is inventive with its imagery to heighten the feel. The beginning scenes are in black and white, while the stuff on the other side is in color. The tunneling imagery is also super cool.
The film uses flash-forwards so we only have to watch the tunnel bits in fragments. It’s just smart from a pacing perspective.
Once they get to the other side, it becomes a fish out of water story — one of the 80s most overused tropes. It’s not too by the books, but when it goes for humor I was more annoyed than anything. Also, Griffin spends so much of the movie begging people for shit and it’s grating.
The film accidentally makes a connection between the black plague and the AIDs epidemic — accidental, because it comes up but the filmmakers didn’t do it intentionally.
Despite its charms and visuals, the film is a bit too clunky to love. Still, this film is better than the material suggests.