Film Review

The Reckoning (2020) • Shudder

A young widow, haunted by the suicide of her husband, is falsely accused of being a witch by her landlord after she rejects his advances.

Neil Marshall’s had an interesting career, after his low-budget werewolf movie Dog Soldiers (2002) enabled him to make modern classic The Descent (2005), which in turn led to the less well-received post-apocalyptic action film Doomsday (2008) and historical war movie Centurion (2010). Those later misses pushed Marshall into prestige US television, where he chalked up an impressive resume including ambitious episodes of Game of Thrones (2011–19), Hannibal (2013–15), Black Sails (2014–17), Westworld, Timeless (2016–18), and the Lost in Space remake (the last two of which he also produced).

His undeniable successes on the small-screen were rewarded by Lionsgate handing Marshall $55M to reboot Hellboy (2019), but that project was a disaster thanks to studio interference and barely scraped back its production costs. So now, somewhat inevitably, Marshall’s gone back to his roots with a British-made horror he has complete artistic…