Film

The Northman

Name: The Northman
Genre: Action, Adventure, Fantasy
Released: 2022
Cast: Alexander Skarsgård, Nicole Kidman, Claes Bang, Ethan Hawke, Anya Taylor-Joy

Robert Eggers' berserk, blood-soaked take on the Hamlet legend before Shakespeare got hold of it: no soliloquies, just mud, ritual, and a man turning himself into a weapon. It's slow-burn myth married to brutal spectacle — gorgeous, punishing, occasionally very strange. For people who want their revenge stories to feel ancient rather than tidy.

TMDb rating

7.0

If you liked this

The Witch2016

Eggers' first film shares the same dread-soaked historical rigour and slow collapse of a family under supernatural and psychological pressure. It's quieter but just as unsettling, and shows where his obsessions started.

But Almost no action at all — it's atmosphere and paranoia rather than axes and armour.

Valhalla Rising2010no page yet

Nicolas Winding Refn's mute, one-eyed Viking wanderer moves through a similarly hallucinatory, brutal medieval world. Same texture of mud, silence, and sudden violence, stripped down even further.

But Glacially slow and almost wordless — it tests patience much harder than The Northman does.

Apocalypto2006

Mel Gibson's Mayan revenge chase has the same commitment to full-throttle physical brutality and a hero pushed past human limits. Visceral, relentless, unapologetically savage filmmaking.

But The violence is even more graphic and sustained, and there's less mysticism to soften it.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Hamlet1948

The Northman is Amleth before Shakespeare; this is Amleth after. Same bones — dead father, usurping uncle, captive mother, feigned madness — completely different nervous system.

Laurence Olivier's Oscar-winning Hamlet is the same story with the mud washed off — the Amleth legend after Shakespeare civilised it into verse, doubt, and indoor tragedy.

But Stagey, talky, black-and-white 1940s cinema — a total tonal 180 from Eggers' feral, physical version.

The Revenant2015

A man left for dead claws his way back through wilderness and cruelty for vengeance, shot with the same painterly, punishing intensity. Grief and rage as physical endurance.

But More survival drama than mythic saga — the supernatural undertow of The Northman isn't really here.

Gladiator2000

The template for the modern revenge epic: a man stripped of everything, working his way back to the man who wronged him, with real scale and spectacle behind it.

But Much more conventional Hollywood storytelling — clean arcs, rousing score, none of Eggers' strangeness.

Braveheart1995

Another blood-and-mud historical epic built on loss curdling into vengeance, with the same appetite for brutal, unglamorous battle. A crowd-pleaser with real teeth.

But Broader and more sentimental — it wants you rousing and cheering, not unsettled.

Conan the Barbarian1982

The pulpiest ancestor of Amleth's story: a wronged son turned into a killing machine by fire and steel, hunting the man who destroyed his family.

But Far campier and less historically grounded — this is myth as muscle-bound B-movie, not prestige cinema.

Kingdom of Heaven2005

Ridley Scott's director's cut delivers the same scale of medieval violence and moral weight, following a man forged by loss into something harder.

But Long and talky in places — the theatrical cut in particular loses a lot of the character work.

Outlaw King2018no page yet

A lesser-known Scottish historical drama with muddy, unglamorous battle and a fugitive king clawing back what was taken from his family. Underrated and grim in the right way.

But Smaller budget, smaller ambitions — it doesn't reach for myth the way The Northman does.

Vikings2013

Same historical texture and pagan cosmology as The Northman, but told at TV length — you get the slow accumulation of feud and prophecy that a film has to compress.

A serialized saga of the same world — raiding, ritual, blood feuds, gods pressing in on daily life — stretched across seasons instead of compressed into two hours.

But Six seasons is a lot, and the show's history and mythology get looser and soapier as it goes on.

Onibaba1964

Same engine — ancient folklore turned into brutal, physical cinema, violence treated as ritual rather than spectacle — but relocated to feudal Japan and told from the other side of the sword.

A Japanese folk-horror classic about two women surviving amid war and famine, sliding into desperation and violence in a landscape as feral and mud-caked as Eggers'.

But Black-and-white, subtitled, and slower — a very different culture's myth-making, with no big-name cast or scale.