I only knew of this film recently when I read it being described as having Dark Souls vibes. Indeed the styling of the armor seen here, the ickiness of the monsters and the general atmosphere of this dark fantasy world seems to have been inspired by multiple video games. Unfortunately the overall look is all that we get because the budget is so low that we don’t even get any decent action scenes. I commend director Jordan Downey on executing a specific vision well but this is too small in scope and too cheaply made that it should have been a short film.

A lone warrior lives in cabin that is stuffed full of weapons, strange concoctions and the skulls of the monsters he has killed, with only his horse for company. From time to time, the castle sounds a horn to issue a bounty on a monster and he duly goes to complete the job. Years earlier, his daughter was killed by one such monster and he hopes that it will one day return so that he can have his revenge. Though strong and skilled, he is sometimes wounded by the monsters he fights. However using the parts of different beasts, he is able to concoct some sort of poultice that though seemingly vile is highly effective at healing even the most grievous of injuries. After a particularly busy period including a fight in which his horse is killed, the warrior finally gets the bounty on the monster that killed his daughter. Completing it involves an extended journey to the far north until he finally confronts and kills the monster in a cave. He returns home with the monster’s head as a trophy but carelessly leaves it on the floor of his cabin. The poultice he uses is accidentally spilled onto the head and it predictably reanimates.

Visually this strikes the right tone, especially since it doesn’t shy away from depicting gore and the results of graphic violence. The weapons look suitably menacing and the armor the warrior wears is a good balance between practicality and coolness. Seeing the interior of his cabin is a treat as we get a decent idea of how he lives, prepares his healing poultice and repairs his equipment. The bad news is that this is pretty much all that the production has the budget for. We never get a clear shot of any of the monsters he fights. All of the fights take place off-screen without even an artful depiction of the encounter in silhouette or something. The team tries their best with the so-called Head monster by forcing the warrior to fight it in the dark in cramped conditions. But they still can’t entirely avoid it coming across more as camp than horror. The world feels profoundly empty even though we know that there must be an entire kingdom in the background. The actor Christopher Rygh pulls off the look of a Viking-inspired warrior well enough but he can’t carry the entire film all by himself.

At only a little over an hour long, this isn’t a long film at all but even so it struggled to hold my attention for its entire length. The first ten minutes or so are great as it teases a proper dark fantasy world. But once I realized that this is as good as it gets and it will never actually show a fight scene, my interest dropped like a rock. It doesn’t help that there is some effort to pad out its length such as by having the warrior repeatedly take contracts. It feels unworthy to judge the film so poorly as the team clearly tried their best and Downey does have a cool vision. But without more money to pull it off, they would have been better off limiting their ambitions and made this a short film instead.