Neil Marshall returns to the genre that made his name, reuniting with Dog Soldiers star Sean Pertwee, and featuring a striking lead performance from Charlotte Kirk (who also co-wrote the script) as a widow accused of being a witch.

It’s Witchfinder General for the Covid era, featuring a star-making turn from Kirk (Ocean’s Eight), who turns from tortured victim to fierce avenger; and a fantastic performance from Pertwee as a superbly sinister judge. Marshall, who directed episodes of Game of Thrones and Black Sails, knows how to mount a thrilling action set-piece, and piles on lashings of blood and thunder – and even a skin-crawling appearance from the devil – to tell this tale of a woman wronged seeking vengeance. With touches of Hammer horror and recent cult hits The Witch and The Nightingale, THE RECKONING is, as BritFlicks says, “a proper rip-roaring yarn”.

Set against the backdrop of the Great Plague and subsequent witch-hunts against women, Grace Haverstock (Charlotte Kirk) must grapple with the tragic untimely death of her husband Joseph (Joe Anderson) in a society completely consumed by fear and death. Because she rejects her landlord Squire Pendleton’s (Steven Waddington) advances, she is falsely accused of being a witch and thrown in jail for a crime she didn’t commit. Grace must endure physical persecution at the hands of England’s most ruthless witch-hunter Judge Moorcroft (Sean Pertwee) and face her own inner demons as the Devil himself starts to work his way into her mind