Director – Lawrie Brewster, Screenplay – Sarah Daly, Producers – Lawrie Brewster & Sarah Daly, Photography – Michael Brewster & Gavin Robertson, Music – Yousef Khalil, Visual Effects Supervisor – Michael Brewster, Makeup Design – Kat Morgan. Production Company – Hex Studios/Films 4 U Eis 1 Ltd/High Fliers Films/Needle’s Eye Productions.
Cast
Ryan Livingstone (Braedyn, the Dragon Knight), Regan Walker (Edwin), Megan Tremethick (Jigme), Andrew Gourlay (Prince Torsten), Jack Ferguson (King Thollin), Michael Daviot (Highfather Albens), Briony Monroe (Lauris), Lawrie Brewster (Arlo), Emily Louise Knutsson (Spectral Woman)
Plot
The dark forces of Abadon have waged a war across the land for a hundred years. In an inn, the callow Edwin meets Braedyn, the last of the legendary Dragon Knights. Edwin follows Baredyn, wanting to become his squire. Braedyn reluctantly allows Edwin to accompany him as he sets out in search of the mountain where the last dragon not to have been killed by Abadon slumbers. They are joined along the way by the assassin Jigme. They appeal to the King Thollin to use his meagre armies to defend the land. At the same time, the forces of Abadon seek an accord with Thollin, one that will in actuality allow them easy access to ravage the kingdom. Imprisoned by Thollin, Braedyn and comrades seek to escape and appeal to the dragon for help.
Dragon Knight was the sixth film for Scottish director Lawrie Brewster who has maintained a presence making B-budget films since first appearing with White Out (2011). He has mostly worked in horror with the likes of Lord of Tears (2013), The Unkindness of Ravens (2016), The Black Gloves (2017), Automata/The Devil’s Machine (2019) and the subsequent Ghost Crew (2022), The Vance Institute (2023) and another fantasy film The Slave and the Sorcerer (2024), as well as an episode of the anthology For We Are Many (2019). All of Brewster’s films are written by Sarah Daly.
There was a spate for Epic Fantasy films during the early/mid-1980s, which produced mostly B-budgeted copies such as Hawk the Slayer (1980), the Italian Ator films, The Sword and the Sorcerer (1982) and Wizards of the Lost Kingdom (1984), among others. It died away not long after but Dragon Knight is part of a resurgence of these low-budget fantasy films that has started to creep back in the late 2010s/20s.
I expected nothing much of Dragon Knight except another B fantasy film but Lawrie Brewster surprised me. He does a good job of capturing the sense of a dark, often gritty fantasy world. He makes good use of lighting and in photographing the landscapes. Particularly impressive is when the party visit the throne room of King Thollin where Brewster and co appear to have gained the use of a real Gothic cathedral as location. (There is no production designer credit meaning that all the sets have been shot on location).
Braedyn the Dragon Knight (Ryan Livingstone) and dragon
One of the surprises of the film is the characters speaking in distinctive Scottish accents, particularly noticeable when it comes to lead Ryan Livingstone – one has become so used to fantasy lands inhabited by standard American and British speakers that it seems a jolt, even though there is no reason at all why they shouldn’t. All of the actors present give solid and convincing performances – you could easily believe them as real people inhabiting the land.
We get a CGI dragon. It’s not quite up there with Smaug in The Hobbit films but fulfils its purpose fairly well. And Lawrie Brewster delivers battle scenes on a low budget that look quite a bit more expensive and expansive via the use of CGI. The fight scenes in themselves are okay, even if you feel they would have benefitted from a more professional choreographer.
