It’s bitterly cold up north – specifically 9th-century Iceland – in writer-director Robert Eggers’ slow-burning and morally ambiguous thriller, inspired by Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Scandinavian legend.

Shot on location in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, The Northman reunites the American filmmaker with Anya Taylor-Joy and Willem Dafoe, stars of his award-winning films The Witch and The Lighthouse, and with regular cinematographer Jarin Blaschke.

Their mastery of foreboding shadows and natural light, epitomised by a fluid single take of Vikings storming a fortified outpost and massacring menfolk, creates striking yet horrific tableaux of a torched barn filled with screaming women and children.

Alexander Skarsgard and co-star Taylor-Joy are exposed in every sense, including dramatically necessary full-frontal nudity to deter an imminent sexual assault with a demonstration of menstrual blood.

Mood and mythology overwhelm a simplistic revenge plot co-written by Eggers and Icelandic author Sjon to inflate the running time beyond what feels comfortable, providing us with a physical ordeal in tandem with characters’ gruelling odysseys through mud and mire.