everything you have heard about this movie is true.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

The movie is surprisingly subdued in its pacing, its characterizations, and its go-for-broke sensibilities.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Identical to 1955 John Wyndham's book, "The Chrysalids"!Even identically using New Zealand in the visions!lol!

I first watched this film in the early nineties. It's always a good sign when a movie can suck you into something new. This is a unique story in a ocean of sequels and copies. It's not just a film about time travel, in fact the time travel takes a back seat to the psychology of a medieval man. This film is about a small medieval village during a time of the plague and a boy who seems to have an answer on how to keep this plague at bay. It's a world filled with superstitions and struggle, even when the travelers end up in the modern era, all their motivations are much the same. It is a gritty film, for some it may be a bit to dark, but it is a truly fascinating and original study.

I ordered the DVD of this on the sole knowledge that it was a time-travel film and imagining that it couldn't NOT be fun - and unfortunately came to regret my purchase on watching the said film although I actually watched the DVD three times in the hope that I could glean more interest the second and third time round. But no, my overall opinion did not change. This is for a number of reasons, firstly the dialogues are mostly unintelligible, they are very strong Scottish/Irish accents, there should be subtitles but there aren't any, so, basically, if you are not Scottish/Irish, you're up a gum tree. If English is not your mother tongue, you can forget the film completely ! Second thing is picture quality which is very amateur compared to similar type films made in Hollywood, thirdly, there is little interaction between the people from the 14th century and the people from the 20th - the fun about time-travel films is exactly the interaction which serves to construct a plot. Our band of miners, although "physically" in the 20th century, remain for the most part amongst themselves, and I would even query the logic of certain of their reactions faced with modern conveniences such as lorries and television sets.Here we have people tunnelling through a mine in Cumbria and ending up in New Zealand. Even if they were very fit, it's just nonsense, there's also the boy who dreams it all in advance but we don't know why.The worst failing of the film is it's almost perpetual dark and night. I intensely dislike films that take place all the time at night. Human beings are generally sleeping at night, whatever country they may be in so it doesn't make sense to make a film of this nature take place in the middle of the night - unless we are talking about a night watchman who's gone off on a time travel adventure - but this is not the case. So why make most of the sets in pitch dark, it's unnatural and you get the impression, rightly or wrongly that the film maker is trying to hide some inadequacies, whatever they may be.Lastly I'm not into medieval dress and costume - I am a person of the 20th century and am open to time travel around 200 or 300 years but the 14th century is a little too far back for me ! The film is the antithesis of another time travel film which I equally detested called the 12 monkeys - that was too extreme in the other way, incomprehensible plot, too many special effects to the point of becoming boring. In this film, the plot is just not strong enough to engender emotion, and there is no romance, which is a big "minus" in time travel films.As far as time travel goes, I'm more of a "Portrait-of-Jennie", Somewhere in time, For all time, cream-in-my-coffee person - I don't like the extremist ends of the scale, either too primitive (this film) or too overdone ( many others).I cannot possible recommend this film to anyone seeking an exciting and coherent time travel adventure ....the only possible use would appear to be a cure for radical insomnia.

I stumbled across this flick on VHS, in a s-mart basket (the ones that gather lot of rubbish, and a few jewels, at a cheap price). I was haunted by the cover (different from the one IMDB shows) and the plot and the prize won at some Mistery Festival (or whatsoever). It was the right choice: the story is not so original, but it works. A sort of metaphisical trip through time and space, an ordeal for ancient knights surrounded by contemporary evil. A little treasure in the fantasy gender. It deserves more than it's got.