Film

Valhalla Rising

Nicolas Winding Refn's Viking film is less a story than a fever dream: a mute, one-eyed warrior slaughters his way from captivity to an unknown shore, and the film watches in near-total silence, drenched in blood-red light and dread. It's slow, sparse, almost wordless, more interested in mood and myth than plot. For anyone who wants cinema as hallucination rather than narrative.

TMDb rating6.1

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Drive2011

Refn again, trading Dark Age fog for LA neon — same appetite for elongated silences punctured by sudden, shocking violence, and a nearly wordless lead who communicates entirely through stillness and stare.

But If Valhalla Rising's glacial pace tested your patience, this won't move any faster — just with a synth soundtrack instead of drone.

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The Northman2022

Robert Eggers' Viking revenge saga is the loud, mythic cousin to Refn's hush — same blood-soaked cosmology and berserker fury, but with dialogue, a plot, and Björk as a witch.

But It's got the spectacle and scale Valhalla Rising deliberately withholds — if you loved the austerity, this might feel almost too much.

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Apocalypse Now1979

The original journey upriver into madness — Coppola's Vietnam fever dream shares One-Eye's structure exactly: a small crew drifting toward an incomprehensible, hallucinatory reckoning with their own violence.

But It's a war film with a script and a Marlon Brando monologue — much more conventional storytelling than Refn's wordless ritual.

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The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Seventh Seal1957

Both put a battle-worn man face to face with mortality and meaninglessness in a medieval landscape stripped of comfort — Refn just removed the dialogue Bergman needed to ask the same questions.

Bergman's knight wanders a plague-ravaged medieval landscape playing chess with Death itself — black-and-white, existential, and just as concerned with a warrior confronting the emptiness behind his own violence.

But It's Swedish art cinema from the fifties, talkier and more explicitly philosophical than Refn's near-silent approach.

The Seventh Seal poster
More like this (8)

The Revenant2015

Brutal, near-mute survival against a merciless landscape, filmed with the same reverence for silence and pain — Leonardo DiCaprio crawling through frozen wilderness in a role built on grunts, not lines.

But It's gorgeous and visceral but far more mainstream — you'll get music cues and emotional beats Valhalla Rising refuses to offer.

The Revenant poster

Aguirre, the Wrath of God1972

Herzog's doomed conquistador expedition into the Amazon is the arthouse blueprint for men marching toward a horror they can't name — feverish, mesmerising, and just as convinced of its own myth.

But It's older, rougher-looking, and Klaus Kinski's performance is a strange, theatrical kind of unhinged rather than Mikkelsen's coiled stillness.

Aguirre, the Wrath of God poster

Bronson2009no page yet

Refn again, this time inside Tom Hardy's head as Britain's most violent prisoner — same stylised brutality and theatrical framing, but with jet-black comedy where Valhalla Rising has only dread.

But It's a completely different tone — brash, funny, and performative where the Viking film is silent and grim.

Hannibal2013

Mads Mikkelsen again, this time as a serial killer with exquisite table manners — the same unreadable stillness he brings to One-Eye, redirected into elegant, operatic horror.

But It's a network-adjacent TV drama with plots, dialogue, and dinner parties — a completely different register from Refn's wordless ritual.

Hannibal poster

Green Room2016

Jeremy Saulnier's siege thriller has the same unglamorous, matter-of-fact violence — punk musicians trapped with neo-Nazis, brutality shot plainly, without music telling you how to feel.

But It's fast, plotted, and talky where Valhalla Rising is glacial and near-silent — a different rhythm entirely.

Green Room poster

The Witch2016

Robert Eggers' folk-horror debut shares the same austere dread and religious unease, a family unraveling in a hostile, ambiguous wilderness that might be cursed or might just be nature.

But It's a horror film with a clear plot and jump-scare instincts Valhalla Rising never bothers with.

The Witch poster

Baraka1992

Valhalla Rising already trusts imagery over dialogue more than almost any narrative film dares; Baraka removes narrative entirely and shows you what that instinct looks like taken all the way.

A wordless, plotless documentary of ritual, landscape and human life across the globe — pure image and rhythm, no narration, no characters, just the hypnotic accumulation Valhalla Rising is reaching for.

But There's no story, no violence, no warrior — just meditative imagery, which some will find beautiful and others unbearable.

Baraka poster

Pathfinder2007no page yet

Same skeleton — outsider warrior, Viking invaders, a new world — played completely straight as pulp adventure instead of art-house dread, so you can see exactly what Refn stripped away.

A gloriously trashy B-movie with almost the identical premise — a lone warrior raised among Vikings turns on them to defend Native Americans, told as loud, CGI-blood spectacle.

But It's cheesy, over-lit, and scored like a video game — everything Refn's austerity was reacting against.

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Vinland Saga, The Green Knight, The Northman