Which is why those are you living in Los Angeles, New York, and Minneapolis, Minnesota will be marching out to your local movie house to see Christopher Smith's Black Death, the aforementioned occult thriller, when it opens on Friday. Check the handy link below for upcoming dates.
This flick has gotten a good deal of coverage here, but, damn it, I saw it too, and Black Death deserves all the love it can get. Here's an excerpt from my review at Fearnet:
Kudos to Smith for presenting the tale with a firm directorial hand, an admirable sense of ambiguity, and a low-key attention to detail. There are dozens of ways for a "dark adventure period piece horror film" to get really clunky really quickly, but the director (working from a very sharp Dario Poloni screenplay) never allows for the pulpy speeches, the obvious jolt, or the overwrought, over-costumed silliness that plague many a similar film. To its inestimable credit, Black Death takes the gamble of playing it dead straight, and it's what elevates the film from a simple genre exercise to something much more intelligent, challenging, and darkly satisfying.