"It is a visceral experience disguised as an erudite thesis," adds Stephen Volk, noted horror screenwriter of the BBC"s infamously scary Ghostwatch (1992), another horror masquerading as a documentary. "I don"t believe for a moment that the director"s real motive was anything other than to shock, if not to rock the audience from complacency, as good horror does. A lot of guff is written about "cursed films" being "imbued with evil" – but with this one, you can almost believe that. There is something about the format that does that to you – the authenticity of an earlier era, I suppose." Certainly, its early film aesthetic, with the patina of age that the grainy visuals and early filmmaking techniques naturally conjure, renders it as close to the feel of its Middle Ages setting as cinema has ever attained.