Such a frustrating disappointment

Best movie ever!

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Now with a topic as exciting as the Norse discovery of North America and the intrigue of the fate of two lone Vikings left behind, you'd think this movie would be Awesome. On top of that the rich and amazing literary tradition of the Sagas provide ample material that would translate wonderfully to the screen. Simply filming the Vinland Sagas with Freydis and the feuding would have been a recipe for an incredible cinematic romp.But two lost Vikings roaming the pre-Columbian expanse of North America - interacting with the tribes, encountering foreign peoples, flora and fauna, astonishing the natives etc - that could also have been an incredible story.But no. With almost no dialogue and bad synth music, the viewer is subjected to an hour and a half of two guys cutting down trees and shitting in the woods.This is not a movie that's so bad it's good. It's just bad.

Severed Ways is a film that reminds me of a fable, of the story books I read as a child, the ones with big images of a dark and imposing forest spilling out across the page, split by the spine of the book. Before the forest is the hero. He might be walking into it or standing at the edge, but the implication was always this: his destiny lay in the woods, the weird wilderness. The narrative was always straight, speaking of determined and unrelenting action rendered in simple typeface "He traveled on..." or "Once into the woods...." And, upon turning the page, there would be a sudden shift, an amazing passage of indeterminate time would find the hero suddenly confronted by a fantastic witch full of temptation and secrets or he might just as well be forced to fight a strange enemy upon an empty place.There is no new story to tell, the fables, the allegories stay with us. The Sagas, folk tales, the Baba Yaga, Aesop, Grimm. In these disparate branches of allegory lie the template for Severed Ways.In many ways, what we see in this film is at once the most happenstance and anthropological examination of an event that never was, it feels as if the drive of the narrative is to paint large, language-free landscapes of simple action. Travel. Eat. S#@t. F#@k. Fight. Die. And yet, there is a subtler language operating, one that doesn't speak in words, forsaking speech for the language expressed in the mountains, streams, trees and sounds of the forest, a forest that once stretched unbroken from the Atlantic coast to the Mississippi River, from south of Hudson's Bay to the Gulf of Mexico. A forest that had no name, no history in written words.Travel. Eat. S#@t. F#@k. Fight. Die. That is the simple ethos of this film.Watch this film like you are reading a fable and get over your clichéd expectations already.

I have to say that I can't believe that this film received the positive reviews. I would never trust anyone about a movie again who would give this more than two stars. I believe that the good reviews must have come from those who had some stake in the film. This movie wasn't even bad enough to be good. The look of the film seemed to be created by lining up the worst DV cameras in the world and shooting every scene with a different one, while not worrying about setting them up. The entire visual experience is ruined by this. Nothing flows. Every type of camera effect looks like an afterthought.Things need to happen in a movie to make a viewer want to watch. And the characters should be at least remotely interesting. This was like watching some "Day in the life" cam show-only interesting to those who have no life themselves, and/or have a scatological perversion. Seriously, how did showing a person evacuating their bowels further the story or give us insight into the character? Yeah, I know that happens. I read about it in the toddler book, "Everybody Poops."I think the thing that makes me so angry about this film is that it really stinks up the independent movie scene. I have defended the indy movie scene to many people that believe true indy movies are synonymous with crap. This one won't help. I gave this movie one star because I couldn't select 0. The director of this film seriously needs to think about finding a different line of work. I do wonder who actually finances junk like this. In closing, if you didn't get this from the review, I feel this movie had no redeeming value and wish I didn't have to look upon the box at the video store. I don't mean for this review to sound spiteful or hateful but I feel truly feel it is a slap in the face to all those people who are struggling to get out a genuine, thought provoking piece of entertainment.

I saw this film at the LA Film Festival over a year ago and it I haven't been able to get it out of my mind. It was mesmerizing and poignant and definitely unlike anything I've seen before. It really stayed with me. In a weird way, it was a cross between Terrence Malick's "The New World" and some sort of Monty Pythonesque heavy metal movie. Sounds weird, but it was a great combination!! Excellent soundtrack by the way, again, strangely appropriate to have heavy metal music for a Viking historical drama. I have to admit, when it first started I thought "Oh god, can I sit through two hours of this?" because of the intense and strange camera angles and techniques, but after a few minutes I settled in and was drawn in to the simple story and grew to really care about these two Vikings. The ending has really stayed with me. It is a mesmerizing film.