By Forris Day Jr.
Zombies are a fan favorite in the film world and “Knight of the Dead” delivers lots of these “Walking Dead”. The story follows a band of knights as they have to travel through the Valley of Black Death. The valley is a kind of Limbo for the dead but instead of sitting in a waiting room listening to bad elevator music while wondering if they will end up going to Heaven or Hell they are quite simply turned into flesh eating zombies. The knights have been entrusted to protect the Holy Grail and for some reason it needs to be brought through the Valley of Death. I say send it Fed-EX and avoid the zombies.
There are lots of sword fights that include zombie destruction and some nice scenes of the dead human shells munching on the living. A real win-win for the living and the dead. Like they say…you have to break a few eggheads to make a brain omelet…or something like that. The setting is pretty cool. It was shot on the hills in Wales, England and has some nice shots of disintegrating castles and rugged countryside. The costuming is well done too. I should also mention that while these knights are being harassed by the ever hungry zombies they are also being hunted by a gang of ruthless assassins. When it rains it pours.
So the scenery is great, costumes are well done, zombie special effects are spot on and the story…well…it kind of sucks. I can see all the work that went into this movie and sadly the story is pretty bad. There almost is no story. It was weak at best and hard to follow. It focused so much on the special effects that I felt as though the movie lost sight of where it was going. I did not relate to or root for any of the characters. As a matter of fact I was pretty psyched when some of the main cast got devoured by the zombie horde. Do I feel guilty for feeling that way? Sure, but I got over it by my second bowl of popcorn.
As nice as the location shooting was some of that beauty was lost in post production with the colorization of the movie. It had that drab washed out look where everything looked dark and colorless. I understand the artistic choice to do that. It was done to make the Valley of the Dead a dark place with a miserable feel but what it really did was make the movie difficult to watch because so many details were lost in the picture. It’s a techie thing I know, but as a viewer I did not enjoy struggling to see details in the dark picture. The best way I can describe how it felt on my eyes is like this; you know when the sun just goes down, but there still is a bit of light, and your eyes are still adjusting? You can still see things but details are lost? It was just like that.
Overall a well shot movie, with some cool fight scenes, and pretty cool zombies. The weak storyline and funky colorization really destroyed this one for me. If you enjoy zombies and can look past all the other stuff you may enjoy “Knight of the Dead” but if you are looking for a film to savor I can not recommend this one.
Rating: 3.5/10 — “Wasted knight”
