After Neil Marshall's Hellboy reboot wound up becoming a critical and commercial failure, the director wanted to return to his roots with a project he had creative control over; the result is The Reckoning, a horror thriller that stars Charlotte Kirk as a woman who is accused of being a witch after losing her husband during the Great Plague and is forced to endure gruesome torture at the hands of England's most ruthless witch-hunter, Judge Moorcroft (Sean Pertwee).
In addition to directing The Reckoning, Neil Marshall also co-wrote the script alongside Charlotte Kirk and Edward Evers-Swindell. While speaking with ScreenDaily last summer, Marshall said that he didn't want to make a two-dimensional horror film that was simply a bunch of scares. "I need some substance, and if I’m going to tell a story it has to be horror on multiple levels and have something to say," Marshall said. "Initially we were developing a story that was a bit more Carrie-esque, where someone’s accused of being a witch and it turns out she really was and then she was going to zap people with thunderbolts coming out of her eyes. I wasn’t really feeling it. Then Charlotte said, what if there were no witches in the film, so we left it ambiguous. That suddenly got me interested."
The official synopsis for The Reckoning:
After losing her husband during the Great Plague, Grace Haverstock (Charlotte Kirk) is unjustly accused of being a witch and placed in the custody of England’s most ruthless witch-hunter, Judge Moorcroft (Sean Pertwee). Forced to endure physical and emotional torture while steadfastly maintaining her innocence, Grace must face her own inner demons as the Devil himself starts to work his way into her mind.
The Reckoning will debut in select theaters, On Demand, and Digital HD on February 5, 2021.