The Northman Blu-ray Review

THE MOVIE — 3/5

Plot Synopsis: Prince Amleth is on the verge of becoming a man when his father (ETHAN HAWKE) is brutally murdered by his uncle (CLAES BANG), who kidnaps the boy’s mother (NICOLE KIDMAN). Two decades later, Amleth (ALEXANDER SKARSGARD) is now a Viking who raids Slavic villages. He soon meets a seeress (BJÖRK) who reminds him of his vow — save his mother, kill his uncle, avenge his father.

Quick Hit Review: I will admit up front that I was not a fan of Robert Eggers’s acclaimed feature debut, The Witch, a movie vastly overrated in my eyes and one that outside of the sets and performances never made an impact on me and in fact made me chuckle a time or two (like the witch cackling at the moon for instance). Going into The Northman I had forgotten Eggers directed The Witch and while this one was an improvement for nothing else than to be watchable. It was still a film that stylistically was interesting and once more had respectable production values being set in the 9th century, but at the same time it really made little impact from an emotional level, not fully caring about one man’s mission of vengeance and along the way falls in love with a fellow slave, played by the wonderful Anya Taylor-Joy (who made her own impact in The Witch).

Another admission I must make is I don’t have much interest into Viking lore and so I don’t have any idea how accurate this is on a historical front and having never even watched the History Channel/Amazon Prime series Vikings, I can’t make any comparisons. For me, The Northman had much to admire from a well rounded cast (in the case of Willem Dafoe however, he only has a couple minutes of screen time. On the visual front, the film has its weird moments yet still looked amazing even if at times I got the whole style over substance vibe.

Co-scripted and directed by Robert Eggers, The Northman does have great visuals and the cast all play their parts pretty well, however this is not one I really have much desire to re-watch anytime soon though as someone who wasn’t a fan of The Witch, I went in with middling expectations and at least this film met those. At best I would say it’s worth a rental.

SPECIAL FEATURES – 3½/5

This release comes with a slip cover and inside a redemption code for the Digital HD copy.

Deleted/Extended Scenes (12:28) — There are nine scenes here either trimmed or didn’t make the cut. Nothing noteworthy but some extra scenes building the world and a couple minor character moments.

An Ageless Epic (11:17) is a behind-the-scenes featurette with cast and crew discussing the 9th century time period and folklore story.

The Faces of Vikings (10:27) — This featurette breaks down the cast and their respective characters.

Amleth’s Journey to Manhood (3:56) — This one takes a specific look at the main character.

Shooting the Raid (4:10) goes behind-the-scenes on how the raid sequence was filmed in a single camera, one-shot take.

Knattleikr Game (2:42) looks at the medieval Viking game sequence.

A Norse Landscape (4:43) is a featurette on filming in Ireland where a good portion of the production was located, doubling for Iceland.

Audio Commentary with Co-writer and Director Robert Eggers

VIDEO – 4½/5

The Northman pillages onto Blu-ray presented in the original 2.00 widescreen aspect ratio and a 1080p high-definition transfer. Although this is a very darkly lit movie and there’s barely any sunlight whatsoever, obviously colors are going to be muted especially since the wardrobe from all involved is drab. Still, the detail throughout was good and I didn’t notice any bouts of artifacts, banding or other flaws.

AUDIO – 5/5

The disc comes with a Dolby Atmos track and if there was one thing I took away from this movie, the sound design was incredible, haunting at times even. Dialogue (and animalistic yells) comes across with great clarity and the score from Robin Carolin and Sebastian Gainsborough was remarkable. Depth was also on display with the ambient noises in the baron locations.

OVERALL — 3/5

Overall, there’s no doubt Robert Eggers is a talented filmmaker and while I can appreciate some of the technical achievements with bringing a Viking lore to life, and the entire cast giving solid performances, I wasn’t entirely captured by the story and in the end, despite some wonderful visuals, found this to be fairly forgettable.