Elrick, a forgotten Viking king, is given a series of tasks to accomplish in order to defeat Thor, the God of Thunder. The odds are stacked against him.

I watched this with low expectations. I knew this wasn't going to be Citizen Kane but was just interested in some light action to while away the time. (The fact that Natassia Malthe is in this movie helped too!). Yet, despite my low expectations, I was still very disappointed: this film is off-the-charts bad.

Everything about this is badly done: plot, dialogue, acting. Dialogue is extremely cringeworthy. The average school play has better performances. Even the fight scenes, production values and special effects and craptacular. Colour goes from grey to bright to black-and-white for no apparent reason. How can you mess up the cinematography that badly?

Avoid like the plague.

Vikingdom is not the piece-of-whatever-with-no-redeeming-values that it has been said to be in previous negative reviews, and when it comes to Thor-related movies it is nowhere near as bad as Almighty Thor(honestly if there was a movie where the piece-of-whatever-with-no-redeeming-values term applies it's that one). Vikingdom has a cool opening sequence, Craig Fairbrass brings dignity to his character far out-shining the rest of the actors, Natassia Malthe is a beauty and is not a complete blank as an actress at any rate and the movie had a clever concept going for it. Sadly it was a concept that deserved better execution. The rest of the acting doesn't come across well at all, John Foo does try and has some good karate-like moves but his acting is not as natural. He is at least better than Conan Stevens and especially Dominic Purcell, Thor's cheap-looking hammer here had more subtlety than Stevens' acting(here Thor is all moody and angry and no other emotions) and Purcell's lead performance is devoid of any expression or involvement whatsoever other than staring into space in a just-had-a-quick-fix sort of way. The music is constant monotone sluggishness and repetition, and often it is at odds with the style and mood of the movie, while the characters are simplistically drawn with shallow personalities and the script is horrendously stilted and is not sure whether it wants to sound archaic or modern because it became across as an awkward hybrid of both. The story had real potential, but was quite dull and drawn out with some scenes that felt like filler but didn't need to be there, there were also some good ideas that were not fully explored. The worst asset about Vikingdom were the production values, there are low-budget movies out there that are decent with in some instances acceptable production values but these production values ranged from bizarre(the garish mish-mash of costumes and make-up) and awful(the underground basement-like sets, especially the castle interiors, and the wigs that would even give Bride of Frankenstein's hair a real fright). The camera work and editing really hinder the action sequences going way overboard with the slow-motion, the limited colour palette the movie is shot and lit in are both garish and over-saturated and that further adds to how hard on the eyes the movie looks. And you cannot comment on Vikingdom without mentioning the laughably plastic props and jaw-droppingly bad special effects, especially the papier-mâché-like creature that you weren't sure whether it was meant to be a dog or a dragon(it didn't really convince as either). Overall, loved the idea but the execution left much to be desired. 3/10 Bethany Cox

Ok, it is a bit of a shocker, this film. It isn't that the acting is terrible, nor is the story - indeed it does have some imagination behind it - and I love these kind of fantasy stories. It is the SFX that truly let this down. Most of the snow effects (and there are plenty of them) make you think that you are inside a glass Christmas snowscape that has just been shaken; and the wizard has eyebrows to die for...! The dialogue is pretty diabolical and the fight scenes really do smell of badly established CGI. It has clearly been done on a small budget and if you treat it a such, you should make it through to the end; but keep your expectations low or you will suffer for it...