While details are scarce, sources say the story is set in 13th century England. The script also features dialogue that was true to the time period and has translations and annotations for those uninitiated in Old English.
Sounds very promising, I love it when directors do this instead of dumbing down a script for wider appeal. I watched The Witch recently and the dialogue really added to the immersion, which in turn leads to a scarier film.
- Yeah what I love about the witch is that it captures more than just the horror of like, you know, a witch, but also the hopeless 17th century Puritan nightmare of being excommunicated, ostracized and left to fend for yourselves in the woods in an unfamiliar country.
  
  Spoilers for those who haven't seen it:
  
  I am not a big fan of the horror genre but I absolutely love what directors like Eggers and Flanagan are doing with it. Sort of making films and series about other things, that just happen to have a horror twist to them.
- Idk, at a point it becomes its own weird marketing gimmick. Like, you can make a movie with period accurate 17th century English dialog, because, despite antiquated turns of phrase and whatnot, it is by and large the same language we speak today. Middle English (which is the more appropriate terminology for the vernacular in post-Norman Conquest Britain, not Old English), by contrast, requires significantly more effort to decipher, and I think it is unrealistic to expect any audience put up with a whole movie written in that way, and this is to say nothing of how period accurate pronounciation would further obscure the meaning of words which would otherwise be recognizable in writing.
  To illustrate my point: 1600s English
  To be or not to be, that is the question;
  Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
  The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
  Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
  And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep-
  1300s English
  When that Aprill with his shoures soote
  The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
  And bathed every veyne in swich licour
  Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
  Can you piece together what Chaucer is saying there based on context clues and a decent vocabulary? Sure, it's not impossible, but, again, I believe a modern production written in that way becomes more about the filmmakers choice to use that language to tell the story than it is about the story itself. It's worth pointing out too that the language used in The Canterbury Tales is 100-200 years more modern than the time period of this film. Period accurate dialog would sound even further removed from modern English.
  Now, with that being said, Eggers clearly has a talent for writing evocative period styled dialog so I'm happy to give him the benefit of the doubt, but I am a little wary of the marketing machine already spinning up here.
  
  I'm confused by your argument. It's a marketing gimmick...that won't work because modern audiences don't tolerate period authentic dialogue? That doesn't sound like a marketing gimmick.

VVervvulf

Please let it be good. There's shockingly few good werewolf movies.

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