The story of Amleth has seen many permutations throughout the ages. Skirting back to an Old Norse poem of the 10th century, the Amleth’s tale is as mercurial as time itself. Stretching back to the beginning, there are some almost concrete connections, even between the various iterations of the poem. There’s a king and his wife and their son Amleth. The king is slaughtered by his brother, who then marries the wife and Amleth eventually slays his uncle. A story as old as time, Amleth’s most popularized mythology stems from when William Shakespeare drew upon the Scandinavian legend to write his play Hamlet. In the Northman, co-writer and director Robert Eggers once again turns his love of history into a fierce tale of madness, revenge and fate. And while it’s a story that doesn’t stretch the revenge story in new directions, its bold execution, supernatural embellishments and staggering attention to detail more than makes up for the slight story.

The Northman begins on an oppressively quiet note in 895 with the return of King Aurvandil (Ethan Hawke) to his wife Queen Gudrún (Nicole Kidman) and his son Amleth (Oscar Novak). During his conquests, Aurvandil was severely injured and believes he will soon die, so he decides to pass on the role of king to his very young son. “He’s only a cub,” Gudrún protests. But so was Aurvandil’s father when he took the throne.

He had to kill his uncle, Gudrún reminds him, the first moment of both foreshadowing and the circular notions of fate.

Because the next day, after a ceremony involving farting and belching and pure animalistic behavior, Aurvandil is slain in front of Amleth by his brother Fjölnir (Claes Bang). Fjölnir sets his men to find and kill Amleth, who runs through his village as Fjölnir’s men pillage and destroy the village before he manages to sneak to a lone boat by the ocean. It’s here, tears in his eyes and vengeance on his tongue as Amleth rows out to sea, that Robert Eggers and his co-writer Sjón distill the story to its barest and simplest form: I will avenge you, Father. I will save you, Mother. I will kill you, Fjölnir.

When we catch up to Amleth (Alexander Skarsgård) years later, he’s a viking soldier marching through encampments with his shoulders arched forward like the bear of a man he is. Men are slain, children are burned in locked huts and women are taken for slaves. But Amleth’s journey is recharted by the appearance of a witch (Björk) who reminds him that he is unable to escape the wheels of fate, sending him on a collision course with his father’s killer. Along the way, he meets Olga of the Birch Forest (Anya Taylor-Joy) and the two of them begin plotting Fjölnir’s demise.

In The Northman, Eggers and Sjón take the story that would one day influence Shakespeare and make it about a miserable creature, tortured by the machinations of Fate. A Fate so cruel and callous that he not only can’t escape its pull, but seems unwilling to try. Lusciously filmed by Jarin Blaschke, who also shot The Witch and The Lighthouse, The Northman is desaturated to the point of being almost black and white, with pops of color highlighting specific scenes. It’s a grim story that dabbles in the supernatural and uses its mysticism as a way of exploring themes of fate, revenge, eternal rewards and what it means to be a man in viking society. It’s the perfect third film for a director whose career has explored toxic masculinity and its effect on social interactions. It’s also the perfect calling card to suggest he’s up to filming pure action films, as the moments of violence punctuate nicely stylized and thrilling set pieces.

But as dour as the film could be, Eggers also reaches back into the fantasy genre, particularly the sword and sorcery epics of the late 70s and early 80s, to add levity and horror trappings. While The Northman probably won’t be considered a horror film, Eggers continues to imbue his features with more than simple embellishments of the genre. One particular moment set in a tomb calls back to the more horror-minded fantasies of the 80s, like The Sword and the Sorcerer or Conan. But beneath the images of flying valkyries or warriors long dead and decayed, The Northman is at its best as the final part of Eggers’ triptych of films exploring the concepts of masculinity. By opening the film with Queen Gudrún’s fateful reminder that Aurvandil’s father had to kill his uncle to ascend his throne, The Northman suggests a circuitous path of fate, one that has ensnared Amleth and everyone in his orbit.

You know how the film will end, even if you don’t know the specifics. And while narratively it’s a shame that Eggers and Sjón’s themes don’t subvert the standard revenge tale, it's ferocious enough to satisfy. The Northman misses the thematic depth of Eggers’ first two films, but the talent on display is unmistakable and cements Eggers as a force of nature as mercurial and frightening as Amleth’s rage.