While writing a review for the horror film Black Death, I learned that “torture porn” is a real genre. That should give you an idea of my thoughts on the movie. Here are the review’s opening lines; read the entire piece over at Ology.com.

The proper way to slit a throat, according to Black Death director Christopher Smith, is to saw back and forth against the tender skin like a lumberjack felling a stubborn neck-shaped tree. He didn’t tell those of us at his movie’s NYC premier how he instructed his actors to stab, hang, and disembowel each other, which they do, a lot, in the film, but I have no doubt that the director had equally precise instructions for them. Black Death is that kind of movie.

It might seem curious just how frequently people die by each other’s hands in a film named after and set amidst the most deadly pandemic that Europe has ever seen. But in Black Death, it’s the people who are the true horrors, and Smith forces us to watch in disturbingly graphic detail just how cruel we can be. If you go for that, then this movie is exactly the torture porn that you’ve been looking for.

A few random thoughts that didn’t make the review:

I’m convinced that Sean Bean could maintain a lucrative career without ever removing his chain mail. Christopher Smith seems like a director who would be a lot of fun to work with, and even more fun to drink with (a cold stopped me from actually doing that). Eddie Redmayne is a talented actor but his face kind of scares me.