KnotMissPriceless Why so much hype?

Actuakers One of my all time favorites.

Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Hayden Kane There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

hustlershah To much violence still very very very under rated this movie is way better then at least 99% movies which are being made in hollywood now dayz..........

Reg Repas Between the pace and the "noise" its like having a screw slowly turned into your skull. I hope the director will be merciful and never attempt this again.

consciousgeometry I went into this movie with the expectation of watching something slow, vaguely philosophical, but overall visually interesting and stylized. That's basically how Valhalla Rising tends to be described. While the first predictions were definitely quickly confirmed, it became also rapidly apparent that this film isn't beautifully shot at all- but rather has an extremely garish, digital amateur-look.This is the main reason I'm writing a review, by the way. You see, most people criticizing this movie complain about how boring and vacuous it is. Now, while I find myself agreeing with their sentiment, I also want to add: Valhalla Rising is not a case of "style over substance", as one prominent review here claims and many others echo. In my opinion, it is rather the absence of both.I mentioned my expectations about this movie at the beginning, because even though I know many people consider it to be "slow and boring", a mere exercise in cinematographic style, in my opinion "style" done well, can lend a lot of substance to a film. The extremely sparse dialogue and slow pacing work very well in something like 2001 for example, or to a lesser degree, There Will Be Blood or The Master.This movie though, is simply ugly. Yes, it was filmed on a low budget, but I feel like some of the shots an amateur could have done better on a modestly priced DSLR. I read that the director, Refn, is colorblind and that's his excuse to crush all the blacks and throw simply gross looking filters on badly looking footage to create an amateurish looking mess that should embarrass a youtube vlogger. A few other questionable "stylistic" choices: The constant shaky cam did nothing to enhance the scenes and compositions and just additionally gave the whole production a feel of unpreparedness and it being the result of arbitrary artistic choices. During the entire part shot "on the boat" I felt like I was watching a school-play being filmed, where a bunch of mediocre actors sat on some Viking-ship museum's exhibit placed on a stage with the fog machine cranked up to the maximum and cheesy orange light filtering through. Sound effects seemed to be ripped off youtube and weren't always synced well. Horrid "blood spatter" effects were just thrown onto the footage - seriously, like someone googled "blood stain", took the first .png result and superimposed it over the footage.The reason I'm going on and on about this is not to prove what an observant clever viewer I am, but to show that this movie being called a "visual feast/spectacle" is a bizarre, misguided rumor. This movie looks like sh*t, almost shot for shot. Which completely makes any sort of immersion impossible if you're someone who notices such things.But the visual narrative is the only thing this movie has going for itself, seeing, as you've probably read in many places, that it has almost no dialogue or straightforward plot-motivation for its cast of indistinct characters.So, sadly, I got absolutely nothing out of this movie. The reason I'm giving it more than 1 star is that I very much respect a director pursing his vision. It's no easy feat to make any movie, especially one as unconventional and hard to digest like this. But my respect is limited,seeing that it just fails in many regards that could have been done much better, even with the limited budget it had.

Giallo Fanatic This is a rare movie in that it is very silent in a time where most movies are loud and noisy. Silence is honestly rare nowadays, which Winding Refn pointed out: "Silence is cinema! We are so used to sounds; we're always talked at. Silence is very rare for us for a long duration of time. It makes people very uncomfortable. But what it does, it also forces us to perceive on a much deeper level because we can no longer just be told things..Silence is like gold. It forces the audience to engage more, because they're not being told what to think." So this is an unusual experience with a movie that doesn't have much music and only has about 120 lines throughout its 93 minute play time. But it doesn't make the movie any less atmospheric and gripping, because silence can be very loud too. The silence of the movie makes the movie feel longer and sometimes heavy to watch. Depending on your imagination and analytical skills there is a lot to interpret from the movie. Director: Nicolas Winding Refn; Written by: Nicolas Winding Refn, Roy Jacobsen and Matthew Read; Year of Release: 2009; Genre: Drama; Themes: Religion, greed, war, existentialism, God and aliens. Plot: A mute warrior accompanied by a boy joins a group of men that is looking for the Land of God.Winding Refn has made a cryptic movie that is open for interpretation. Although the dialogue between the characters are scarce it leaves the audience with its core themes: God and religion. Man's quest for ideals. A great philosopher once said: "What is the impetus behind the search for God, and is that search real? For most of us, it is an escape from actuality. So, we must be very clear in ourselves whether this search after God is an escape, or whether it is a search for truth in everything -truth in our relationships, truth in the value of things, truth in ideas. If we are seeking God merely because we are tired of this world and its miseries, then it is an escape. Then we create God, and therefore it is not God. The God of the temples, of the books, is not God, obviously-it is a marvelous escape." That thought is of utter importance, since the movie's characters are hopeless characters so they try to find hope through God and the Holy Land. Also what they do is justify their atrocious actions by saying they are doing it in the name of God. Which is the reason why I included war as one of its themes. In one of the first scenes a heretic commented that Christians eat their God and the only language they understand is money, implying that Christians are driven by greed and gluttony. Further explored by the men seeking the Holy Land.Then there is the sea travel, which cryptically imply aliens had a hand in helping them go to the "Holy Land". Winding Refn commented that he wanted to have One-Eye taken away by a UFO in the end, but thought it was too obvious so he had Indians slaughter him instead. So it also gives the implication God may be an alien. So there is a lot to interpret from the movie to be honest. Which I feel questions the existence of mankind, so I feel the movie has existentialism as one of its themes.Anyway, astounding movie 10/10