Eggers’ sword and sorcery viking fable is every bit as dark as his horror.
The Northman is a raw, unrelenting plunge into the blood-soaked heart of vengeance and destiny, a cinematic saga that wields brutality like a battle axe yet manages to cut deeper with its stark exploration of fate, family, and ferocity. Robert Eggers’ third feature film plants its boots firmly in the mud of Viking mythology, offering an epic that is both savagely primal and mystically profound, a work steeped in historical authenticity and folkloric grandeur.
At its core, The Northman is a deceptively simple revenge tale. Alexander Skarsgård plays Amleth, a prince robbed of his birthright after witnessing the murder of his father (Ethan Hawke) at the hands of his uncle Fjölnir (Claes Bang). The boy flees his homeland but vows to return, reclaim his kingdom, and avenge his family. Years later, as a hulking, feral warrior, Amleth seizes the chance to fulfil his destiny. While the narrative echoes Hamlet – itself inspired by the Scandinavian legend of Amleth – Eggers eschews Shakespearean introspection for a guttural, elemental ferocity that feels deeply rooted in the harsh realities of the Viking Age.
Skarsgård plays Amleth with the kind of committed ferocity that makes many action leads look like they’re doing press-ups for Instagram. He doesn’t merely dominate the screen, we forges it around himself. His physicality is relentless but it’s in the rare moments of stillness that the performance deepens and behind the ritualistic grunts and axe-swinging fury, there’s a flicker of introspection, a man dimly aware that vengeance has hollowed out everything else.
Eggers treats the mythic source material with the same obsessive texture he brought to The Lighthouse, but this time it’s all scale and severity. The collaboration with cinematographer Jarin Blaschke yields compositions that feel carved from volcanic ash and rune stone; every location is a battleground between the elements and the human body, whether it’s a hellish berserker raid or a quiet confrontation in the flickering gloom of a longhouse. The mystical interludes: ravens, Valkyries, and a sword that obeys moonlight aren’t window dressing but expressions of how deeply belief and bloodline are fused in this world.
The supporting cast are just as entrenched in the muck, murder and mythology. Nicole Kidman’s Queen Gudrún sidesteps the typical tragic mother archetype and instead leans into something colder and more unnerving. There’s no softness to be suppressed here, only politics and survival. Anya Taylor-Joy’s Olga, too, is far from a passive love interest; her bond with Amleth forged through shared cunning rather than romance, lending the story a grim kind of hope. Claes Bang’s Fjölnir wears the crown of a man wearied by the consequences of his own brutality. He isn’t redeemed, but he is made legible.
The Northman never disguises the cost of vengeance, or its futility. Every act of retribution leaves the world meaner, narrower, and the film trades in destiny and legend, but there’s nothing ennobling about Amleth’s path. Even its most operatic moments carry the stench of decay. Eggers doesn’t moralise, but he does make it clear that bloodlines are no substitute for meaning, and revenge is a poor excuse for purpose. It won’t satisfy anyone looking for something as rousing as Gladiator or as slick as Vikings. The pace is deliberate, sometimes punishingly so, and the violence never flirts with entertainment. But if you’re willing to meet The Northman on its own brutal, elemental terms, what emerges is a ferocious and strangely beautiful piece of mythmaking; a saga told in mud, fire, and iron.
