I hadn’t really heard of this film prior to dling it, and i didnt have any high expectations from it. It’s based on a fantasy novel about a future man that travels back in time to Earth circa the 8th century CE, in Norway during the time of the Vikings. So there’s many typical elements of time travel stories in it; the guy from the future somehow has to win the trust of the simple folk of an earlier age, has to fret about whether or not to go back, has to decide whether or not his emotional baggage is worth keeping or must be chucked in order to save the universe or get laid with the woman we all know he is going to get the very first moment we see them on the screen together.

It wasn’t terrible though, there wasn’t anything too cheesy. Although John Hurt is in the movie, there aren’t that many super famous people in the film, which to me is always a good thing b/c it means we don’t see the entire repertoire of media images of the actor when we see them in the role. You don’t know these actors, so, seeing them for the first time, you can almost believe that what you are seeing is something “real.”

The morwin, the creature that wreaks havoc on the Vikings, is quite creepy: it’s very Alien-esque, not as scary, but it does manage to pluck people up and away in the darkness in that same ninja way. The books form a series, so naturally one expects that if this movie is successful that there might be another in the future.

Usually these medieval costume type films make you want to retch, so cliche they are: but again, I found this film to be entertaining and fairly inoffensive. Worth a watch on a lazy Sunday, if nothing else.