Main cast: Corey Sevier (Cygnus), Roseanne Supernault (Mari), Michelle Thrush (Nova), Julian Black Antelope (Torik), Nathaniel Arcand (Shappa), Roger LeBlanc (Bartok), Kevin Davey (Marx), Jerome Paton (Elias), Paul Welch (Zizzek), Cameron Gerlitz (Elden), Stephane Legault (Wren), Jonathan Purvis (Lupis), John Barry Graham (Tondo), Tessa Hatheway (Lexi), and Emiko Shimozawa (Virgo)
Director: Benjamin Ross Hayden
Benjamin Ross Hayden, who also wrote the script, probably thinks he has an indie gem in The Northlander, a dystopian action adventure flick, but it’s all in his head, I’m afraid. The biggest misstep is obvious from the first second in the movie itself, when he paid Corey Sevier to be in this movie but made that man wear clothes. Does anyone actually watch Mr Sevier for his acting?
Mr Sevier plays Cygnus, an orphan raised in a tribe called the Lost Ark in a dystopian future where everything looks barren and desert-y. He is a bit of a black sheep because apparently he… kills things differently? That’s the problem with this movie, Mr Sevier wearing clothes aside: it makes little sense. The tribe matriarch Nova sends Cygnus away on some quest to… do something, I guess. Along the way, he meets bad people who spend their time in this movie telling one another long, opaque stuff that is supposed to be philosophical but ends up pretentious, vapid gibberish instead.
And because this movie has a limited budget, a lot of time the actors are just standing there or going around the same few places, and because insurance and special effects are expensive, there is nothing much else here other than boring people I don’t know or care about yammering to one another. When fight scenes crop up, they look really unrealistic and staged. Meanwhile, the costumes all look like they were pilfered from some church’s donation box – aside from booze, perhaps, it’s pretty obvious that a big part of the budget goes to mascara for everyone in this movie.
The Northlander is a boring, rambling, senseless chore. There is really no point watching it, so do not even think about it. Go watch some other movie in which Corey Sevier takes off his shirt instead.
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