Director/Screenplay – Stuart Brennan, Producers – Stuart Brennan, Jessica Maxfield & Mark Paul Wake, Photography – Thomas Dobbie, Music – Dana Al Fardan, Visual Effects – Flamingo Post & Helix Media Group, Makeup Effects – Katrina Morgan. Production Company – Central City Media/KSM/Stronghold.
Cast
Stuart Brennan (Logan), Marcus Macleod (Bernard), Charlie Morgan (Charles), Austin Caley (Rupert), David Izatt (Edgar), Mark Paul Wake (The Necromancer), Sarina Taylor (Marie), Lizabeth Venezia (Lily), Josh Roberts (Reginald), Victoria Morrison (Siren of Memory), Gillian Dryburgh (Siren of Sound), Elanor Miller (Siren of Taste)
Plot
It is 1815. A group of British soldiers in Europe learn they are to be sent to fight at Waterloo but instead decide to desert. They travel into the forest, guided by a wounded soldier they encounter. However, once inside the forest, strange things begin to happen as the men are haunted by guilts from their past and the crimes they have committed brought to life.
British director/writer/actor Stuart Brennan has emerged as an interesting force in genre cinema since the mid-2010s. Beginning in the early 2000s, Brennan has made a number of short films and then several full-length horror films with The Innocent (2006), Plan Z (2016) and subsequent to this the historical werewolf film Wolf (2019), the purely historical film Kingslayer (2022) and the historical fantasy Warchief (2024). In all of these, Brennan directs, writes the script and appears as an actor. He has also written and acted in but not directed The Lost (2006) and a version of A Christmas Carol (2018) where he played the role of Scrooge, as well as produced and acted in The Reverend (2011) and Stalker (2022), plus several other non-genre works.
Stuart Brennan likes to make films that have an historical realism. Both The Necromancer and Wolf borrow the basics of Neil Marshall’s Centurion (2010) and are centred around a group of soldiers in the wilderness in a fierce fight for survival on top of which Brennan throws in some fantastic element – witches and sirens here, werewolves in Wolf. There is a certain smartness to this in that it means that all the films are shot outdoors meaning no need to construct sets – in neither film is there a credit for production designer, for instance. (Most of The Necromancer was shot in Beecraigs Country Park in Scotland).
19th Century British soldiers – (2md from left) Stuart Brennan (also the film’s director and writer) and Marcus Macleod (front)
The film throws you into the midst of action in a battle scene conducting with reasonable ferocity. Thereafter, as the men go on a journey, the film doesn’t always give you clues as to where it is going. There is a journey through the woods and the meeting with a mysterious guide. Throughout, all of the characters have flashbacks to horrible things and ways they have behaved badly in the past, before they encounter mystery women who seem to bring them to a just desserts ending based on the acts they have conducted. I quite liked the place the film reaches at the ending.
