Black Death director Christopher Smith talks about the film, release update

Last Updated on July 26, 2021

Of all the darkly tinged period genre flicks populating Hollywood this coming year, the one I’m most excited to see is Christopher Smith’s BLACK DEATH. Why? Not only is it overseen by the guy who brought us CREEP and SEVERANCE, the flick was shot on location in Germany, almost entirely bereft of movie stars. My bet is, out of all the others, this will be the most naturalistic. Oh, and the shite’s called BLACK DEATH!

Well Chris Smith recently caught up with the beasts over at STYD, and was kind enough to drop a few dimes on the status of his new film.

“It’s hard to describe. It’s a ‘medieval guys on a mission’ movie,” Smith says. ” The period of black death – what’s fantastical and rich about that period? Instead of adding in flying witches and zombies – I haven’t seen what they’re doing with Season of the Witch yet, the trailer looks like it’s that – I said, ‘What if we took a realistic approach?’ The people of the time believe the plague was sent by God to punish them for their sins, or by the Devil to torment them. I wanted to find out what the characters felt and posit them on a journey of ‘is it real? Or is it not real?’ What would a necromancer be like if he existed? We added this fundamentalist knight, so it touches on fundamentalism. It’s a super dark film but it’s excited. It’s like a dark parable about how things haven’t really moved on in the last 600 years.”

Depressing. Which is to say, I f*ckin’ love it!

As far as a plot synopsis for BLACK DEATH goes:

With medieval England fallen under the shadow of the Black Death, a young monk called Osmund is charged in leading a fearsome knight, Ulric and his group of mercenaries to a remote marsh. Their quest is to hunt down a necromancer – someone able to bring the dead back to life. Torn between his love of God and the love of a young woman, Osmund discovers the necromancer, a mysterious beauty called Langiva. After Langiva reveals her Satanic identity and offers Osmund his hearts desire, the horror of his real journey begins.

Good times, right?

But the biggest news in the sit-down was the fact that BLACK DEATH has been bumped from an original February U.K. release to a newly slated May time slot. About said proceedings, Smith had this to inform:

“Because of Season of the Witch and other sword and sorcery things [coming out]. We were trying – because I like to let a film live before it gets to the cinema – to aim [for May]. Why were we rushing it? The film isn’t being changed, we just wanted to take it around. Show it at festivals.”

Hopefully this is true, instead of the flick having to undergo some serious knife work before it can be seen. All I know is between a stoic Hellboy and Nic Cage rockin’ a dastardly hairpiece in SOTW, BLACK DEATH may have a ton of good graces to overcome.

Guess we’ll see how it fairs soon enough.