Black Death (2010 film) | Trailer

The film takes place in 1348 in plague-ridden medieval England. Osmund (Redmayne), a young monk, unbeknownst to his brothers, has fallen in love with a young girl who took sanctuary in the monastery. After the plague befalls his monastery, he believes it no longer safe and sends her home to the marshes. She asks him to join her but he declines on account of his vows, after which she tells him she will wait for him in the marshes by a marker for a week. Soon after, Osmund prays that God will show him a sign as he wishes to leave to join her. As he is doing so, a group of soldiers enters the Church looking for a guide to a village not far from where Osmund's love Avrill was to wait for him. Osmund takes this as a sign and volunteers to lead the feared knight Ulric (Bean) and his band of mercenaries to a remote marshland village which has remained untouched by the Black Death. Their quest is to hunt down a necromancer, who is rumoured to be able to bring the dead back to life.

 

After a journey beset with harrowing pitfalls, Ulric's envoy finds the village, an eerie utopia led by a beautiful witch, Langiva (van Houten). Not knowing who the necromancer is, Ulric tells the townsfolk he and his soldiers were wandering through, hoping to find sanctuary. Seeing the Church falling into disrepair from lack of use, Ulric is suspicious, but nonetheless accepts an invitation for him and his mercenaries to dinner. Before dinner, Langiva shows Osmund the body of a traveller the villagers found by the marker whom he recognises to be Avrill. Osmund goes into a grief-stricken state. During the dinner, Osmund is lured away by Langiva into the marshes where he sees her perform a pagan ritual and brings a body back to life. Back at the dinner, Ulric and his men begin fading into sleep as they realise their drinks have been drugged.

 

Ulric's band and Osmund awake bound in a cage. Langiva offers redemption for those who renounce God. None do so and jokingly vie for who will be executed first. One man is led out to a cross and crucified. The leader of the village then disembowels him. Upon seeing this, one of the men offers to renounce God and does so verbally and loudly, after which he is then hooded with a bag and hanged. Langiva then frees Osmund and takes him to the house where the person she resurrected resides. Inside, Osmund sees his beloved Avrill though she is mentally traumatised. Seeing what has become of her as an abomination, Osmund tearfully apologises to her and tells her he will see her again in Purgatory. He then plunges a dagger into her and watches her die.[3] Osmund then returns to the cage and lays down the body of Avrill and attacks Langiva slicing her across a cheek but is struck down.

 

Reinvigorated, Ulric goads and jeers her that not one of his men will turn from God. In anger, Langiva has Ulric tied between four horses and has him pulled apart. After halting his execution , Ulrich wishes to speak to Osmund , and it is revealed that he is sick with the disease , and thus has spread it to the village. In the commotion, she does not notice that the knife Osmund had slashed her with had rolled to the cage when he was struck down. In the shock of seeing Ulric torn in half, the villagers are caught unaware as the two remaining mercenaries cut their ropes and mercilessly cut down all the villagers in vengeance for the brutal murder of Ulric and their comrades. Osmund notices Langiva retreating to the swamp so he grabs a short sword and follows her into the fog of the marsh. It is there that she reveals to Osmund that she is not a witch but simply a herbalist, using drugs and ceremonies to appear powerful, and that her village, which was untouched by plague, was too remote to have been infected, until Ulric brings it, even saying that it had been a Utopia without God. She also tells him that Avrill had never truly died, but rather the villagers had found her and Langiva had drugged her to appear dead and simply played up a pagan ritual to convince Osmund of her power. Osmund returns to the village and Langiva skulks away into the Marshes. Osmund is then brought home to the monastery by the last remaining soldier.

 

In the aftermath, what was left of the villagers are ravaged by the plague. Osmund, torn by the guilt of the witch being alive and the guilt of being responsible for killing his own love Avrill, becomes a soldier for God and sets about hunting down Langiva, though, unable to reconcile his feelings, he sees his anger for Langiva in the faces of hundreds of women whom he accuses of being witches and has them brutally tortured and killed.