“The Northman”, or “How I learned to stop worrying and love revenge”, is an epic Viking movie spanning 140 minutes. The plot follows Amleth (Alexander Skarsgard) on his quest to avenge his father, kill his uncle and of course find a hot Viking girlfriend along the way.

The best part of this film is its absolute dedication to setting mood. Drums and throat singing accompany fire-lit naked dances and bloody battles. The wide shots of barren landscapes give a sense of loneliness. Even the psychedelic immersion of mythology is taken as consolidated knowledge; nothing is “dumbed down” for the audience. If you don’t get why there are Valkyries or trippy visions of Yggdrasil, that’s on you.

Where I think the movie stumbles is in its development of characters. A lot of them feel one-dimensional, but I can’t decide whether this is a detriment or a feature. The flatness and simplicity of the characters and their objectives could feed into the “Viking epic”; that these are the archetypical characters of tales told around a hearth. Once again, this further leans into the blurred lines of the mystical and the real.

I offer this particular critique because the film feels very much like “Vikings” the movie. I love the Netflix show “Vikings” and there are many parallels in substance and style. However I feel that the TV show gives its characters a complex web of eccentricities, objectives and relationships; a characteristic that “The Northman” sadly lacks.

If you love magic, naked dudes fighting in a volcano and watching a guy get a sword slowly pushed into his face, give “The Northman” a go.