After breaking out in a big way almost two decades ago with Dog Soldiers and The Descent, Neil Marshall has branched out over the last fifteen years by tackling a variety of different projects in a number of genres, but he’s set to return to horror in a major way.
Following the post-apocalyptic Doomsday, historical actioner Centurion and comic book box office bomb Hellboy, not to mention episodes of swashbuckling adventure series Black Sails, psychological thriller Hannibal, existential sci-fi Westworld and the epic fantasy of Game of Thrones to name but a few, Marshall’s next two features see him back on familiar turf.
The filmmaker is currently gearing up to shoot The Lair, a creature feature he’s dubbed as a mix of Dog Soldiers, Aliens and Predator, which follows a downed pilot who unwittingly leads a deadly race of half-human, half-alien hybrids back to a U.S. Army base, but first out of the gate is The Reckoning, which is coming to DVD and Blu-Ray on April 6th.
Set during 1665’s Great Plague of London, Charlotte Kirk stars as a widowed mother accused of witchcraft, who’s imprisoned and tortured at the hands of regular Marshall collaborator Sean Pertwee’s witch-hunting Judge Moorcroft. While Kirk’s Grace Haverstock maintains her innocence, she soon begins to experience some demons of her own, which may or may not be the work of the devil.
The Reckoning premiered last summer, but due to the Coronavirus pandemic, it only released in theaters at the beginning of February. However, it never played on more than 175 screens, so box office takings were limited to under $140,000. Fans have been waiting for Neil Marshall to come back to horror for a while, so hopefully his latest manages to deliver.