The Hollywood of the modern era is well and truly obsessed with designing films by committee and targeting the lowest common denominator to cast as wide a net as possible over the wallets of the average consumers.  While works with more integrity and vision sometimes slip through the cracks (the recently excellent Mad Max: Fury Road comes to mind), it is far more usual to end up with incoherent messes like Hot Pursuit.  As Hollywood begins to crush itself under the weight of its hundreds of sequels, reboots and throwbacks, the movie industries in countries like India (Bollywood) and Russia (Rollywood?) have been steadily picking up the pace by increasingly often producing more risky and unique films than Hollywood has dared to in decades.  Forbidden Empire (or Viy as it is called everywhere else including the film’s own title screen) was made by a largely Russian cast and crew and loosely based around a Ukrainian short story of the same name, so even though it features a couple of familiar faces like Jason Flemyng and Charles Dance, from the moment it starts you can tell it is not of the same ilk as your average Hollywood flick.

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