Black Death  By Garth Franklin March 11th 2011, R, 97min,
Magnolia Pictures Black Death  As dour an experience as the
title suggests, "Black Death" thankfully isn't a failure, but it
does seem to run decidedly off course. Christopher Smith's
earlier work like "Creep" and "Severance" suffered similar
problems of taking a commendable premise and letting it down
with tin-eared dialogue, and barbarism past the point of self-
indulgence. Those films however had a wicked sense of humor to
compensate for their shortcomings, no such luck here.  A pity as
otherwise most of the groundwork here is commendable. 'Death'
avoids the visual effects trickery and silliness of the similar
"Season of the Witch" in favor of more high-minded explorations
of power and religious zealotry in a very superstitious and
almost anarchic society at the end of the High Middle Ages. A
tedious road trip movie early on turns into a more interesting
battle of wills in the second half between a logical but
manipulative and ruthless pagan cult lea