DVD Review: Vikingdom

By Brad Henderson

The success of films like 300 started a trend that has not stopped since then. I’m not saying 300 was the first to do the historical warrior thing, but it seemed it be the film that kickstarted it all. Recently a film called Vikingdom was released. Just the title alone made wonder what I was getting myself into, but I went ahead and gave it a watch anyway.

Let me start off by saying that films like this aren’t my bag but I do enjoy some of them. Sadly, Vikingdom is not one of those films. I understand that Vikingdom was probably filmed on a micro-budget and that’s fine but the harsh reality is that the film doesn’t look all that great. No matter how great your story is or how many popular actors you get, the look of your film has a great effect on how people perceive it.

Vikingdom doesn’t look horrible but it does look like part of it was filmed in a garage in front of a green screen and that they used sets from a local high school’s medieval times play. There are times that it does look better but those are few and far between. Some of the things in the film that do stand out are the wigs because just about everyone with a wig looks ridiculous. At least the acting and dialogue isn’t wonky.

I know that’s a little negative but it is the truth.

However, you do have to admire a film like this. To make a movie on a micro-budget and know what your outcome will probably be is a very ballsy thing. I admire such heart and dedication because it isn’t easy. Hell, making any film is hard. Just because a movie looks cheesy and bad doesn’t mean it was easy to make and should be disregarded. I’m sure they would have loved a $100 million dollar budget. The budget they had was $15 million dollars and it’s still ambitious to do a movie like this with that kind of money. The filmmakers worked with what they had and if you look at it that way they did a pretty decent job pulling off a two-hour historical warrior movie.

Vikingdom was released on DVD on January 21 through Epic Pictures Releasing.