Inclubabu Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

Claysaba Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Breakinger A Brilliant Conflict

PiraBit if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

eferoth Trite title, I know.Didn't even want to write a review after reading the others, too many there already, but this movie seems to attract extreme views, like 1/10 and 10/10. It is and doesn't deserve neither. This movie needs a bit more measure I think, so here I am trying that. Sorry for the prologue.-----This is a movie about an unstoppable Viking murder machine (Mikkelsen) vs everyone and everthing that dares stand in his way.Sort of, but not really.I only recently got aquainted with this director via Neon Demon and Drive. Having seen and loved those, Valhalla Rising is right up my alley.Trying to keep this semi-short and spoiler free.. If you like moody arthouse films, you'll probably like this. If you like the two Refn movies mentioned above you'll probably like this. If you like The Revenant, you'll probably like this.If any of this rings true, just go watch it and form your own opinion.This movie breathes atmosphere, gives the viewer room to ponder and think, and it never gives any clear answers to any of the questions it raises. It's meant to be thought about while and after, but (as with religion... hinthint) no matter how much you think, no answer will be the one true one, If that's not your thing, don't watch.Here's the dreaded word: Pretentious. The more movies like this I see and the more reviews mentioning that word as a negative I read, the more it loses its meaning. Too often it is used as meaning "didn't get it", "boring", "too artsy", "slow paced". This movie isn't pretentious, it is neither of the above except, arguably, slow paced. Arguably because it needs that pace. It takes the time it needs. It accomplishes it's goal to get you to think, to give you the time to do so, to interpret and reinterpret while watching.In my honest opinion, there's not a dull moment in this movie. Every montage of silence and fog and nature and madness in here gives the viewer the time to ponder what came before, what might come after and how the Norse and Christian mythos plays into all of it, influencing its protagonists, while all the while creating its own Myth facing something entirely different, challenging inherent views of life and morality in the face of The Other. These breathing rooms are necessary for this movie... admittedly, as well as a certain amount of religious foreknowledge.Yes the plot of this film could be summed up in one sentence, I did so above, but so could every other movie. It needs a greater movie to speak beyond that one sentence.This one does.If at all interested in the premise, give it a try.-----Technicalities:Mikkelsen delivers a deliberate stoic performance and it's an excellently perfect fit here, so is the boys. Side Characters do their job just fine. Cinematography is pretty great bordering on amazing. Soundtrack is a sometimes dissonantly, always hauntingly fitting metal pleasure. "Plot" is mostly nonexistent/ derivative, but nothing more than what is needed. Movie turns pretty graphic every once in a while, so be warned.

consciousgeometry I went into this movie with the expectation of watching something slow, vaguely philosophical, but overall visually interesting and stylized. That's basically how Valhalla Rising tends to be described. While the first predictions were definitely quickly confirmed, it became also rapidly apparent that this film isn't beautifully shot at all- but rather has an extremely garish, digital amateur-look.This is the main reason I'm writing a review, by the way. You see, most people criticizing this movie complain about how boring and vacuous it is. Now, while I find myself agreeing with their sentiment, I also want to add: Valhalla Rising is not a case of "style over substance", as one prominent review here claims and many others echo. In my opinion, it is rather the absence of both.I mentioned my expectations about this movie at the beginning, because even though I know many people consider it to be "slow and boring", a mere exercise in cinematographic style, in my opinion "style" done well, can lend a lot of substance to a film. The extremely sparse dialogue and slow pacing work very well in something like 2001 for example, or to a lesser degree, There Will Be Blood or The Master.This movie though, is simply ugly. Yes, it was filmed on a low budget, but I feel like some of the shots an amateur could have done better on a modestly priced DSLR. I read that the director, Refn, is colorblind and that's his excuse to crush all the blacks and throw simply gross looking filters on badly looking footage to create an amateurish looking mess that should embarrass a youtube vlogger. A few other questionable "stylistic" choices: The constant shaky cam did nothing to enhance the scenes and compositions and just additionally gave the whole production a feel of unpreparedness and it being the result of arbitrary artistic choices. During the entire part shot "on the boat" I felt like I was watching a school-play being filmed, where a bunch of mediocre actors sat on some Viking-ship museum's exhibit placed on a stage with the fog machine cranked up to the maximum and cheesy orange light filtering through. Sound effects seemed to be ripped off youtube and weren't always synced well. Horrid "blood spatter" effects were just thrown onto the footage - seriously, like someone googled "blood stain", took the first .png result and superimposed it over the footage.The reason I'm going on and on about this is not to prove what an observant clever viewer I am, but to show that this movie being called a "visual feast/spectacle" is a bizarre, misguided rumor. This movie looks like sh*t, almost shot for shot. Which completely makes any sort of immersion impossible if you're someone who notices such things.But the visual narrative is the only thing this movie has going for itself, seeing, as you've probably read in many places, that it has almost no dialogue or straightforward plot-motivation for its cast of indistinct characters.So, sadly, I got absolutely nothing out of this movie. The reason I'm giving it more than 1 star is that I very much respect a director pursing his vision. It's no easy feat to make any movie, especially one as unconventional and hard to digest like this. But my respect is limited,seeing that it just fails in many regards that could have been done much better, even with the limited budget it had.

Alexander My goodness, what an experience. I didn't know what to expect when i got around to finally see the movie. Mads Mikkelsen is a great actor, so i decided its worth a watch.I was kind of blown away by the movie. The start gets you really intrigued and even though its diresome to watch, you just keep sitting there and wondering what will happen. Its dark, brutal, Mads Mikkelsen is amazing in this movie and whats most interesting: Very little dialogue and no music.Its a very philosophical film, about the humans relationship to religion and the core existence. Its feels like Thomas Hobbes is writing a film, with its own twist. To wrap it up : The movie takes you through the hell of humanity in its natural existing state, a very strange movie, but it leaves you thinking. I recommend watching it alone, you will need to process this one for a while. Why I'm not rating it a 10/10 is because the watching experience, while interesting, is very painful. Don't get me wrong, it helps the film in its tone, but its one of those you probably watch once.So give it a watch.7/10

Leofwine_draca This has to be one of the lowest budgeted films I've ever seen: a mere handful of cast members dressed in period costume and no sets whatsoever, unless you count a cage and a boat as a set. It's a Viking epic shot entirely in the great outdoors, so if you're a fan of beautifully rugged Scottish scenery standing in for most parts of the world, you're in for a treat with this film.The makers attempted to make the film look like 300 on the Blu-ray cover I purchased, complete with a cast of shield-wielding warriors in the background. It's a total fallacy. Those expecting an action epic will be disappointed, because this is nothing of the sort: it's actually a 'heart of darkness' type film, a journey into madness and despair, more like AGUIRRE, WRATH OF GOD than any other film I can mention. Our hero, One-Eye, is mute and expressionless, a kind of cipher full of mystery and macho coolness, as envisaged by some early scenes in which he takes part in slave fights, gorily dispatching his enemies by breaking necks, splitting skulls, and pulling out all of a guy's internal organs in one gruesome, stick-in-the-mind interlude.After a long time setting up an utterly bleak, dirty and harsh world, the plot begins for real: One-Eye and his buddy, a kid who's the only sympathetic character in the film, join up with a bunch of Christians planning to spread the word in Jerusalem. After a fraught sea voyage, they actually turn up in North America, where they run foul of primitive Indians. It turns out that one of the plot points in this film – a Norse pillar to the Gods on a Delaware shore – was actually found to have happened by archaeologists, so it's cool the film links that in. In any case, there's no happy ending here, just madness, despair, death, and a bit of male rape thrown in too.I was refreshed to see not a single special effect. There are nightmarish red-tinted dream sequences, in which One-Eye experiences flashes of the future. There's a drug-induced spiral into madness featuring the aforementioned male rape and the building of the pillar. There's a head-scratching ending twist that demands second viewing, and sudden moments of extreme violence and death that keep you completely unsettled while watching. I thought this was a great film, and it's one of the best to make good use of the great outdoors. Here, the outside world is a hostile one in which fear of the unknown plays a big part: it's creepy, atmospheric and sometimes totally chilling.