You’ve shown up here after watching The Vord, and I’m expecting you to be angry, confused, and frustrated. If I say this is one of the worst movies ever made, a lot of you are surely going to agree. To say M.T. Maliha’s movie is bad is an understatement. I wouldn’t actually call it a movie. It does have some sort of a story, but that’s about it. There’s basically no narrative, linear or nonlinear. Things just keep happening randomly. No explanation is ever given. Characters come and go out of nowhere. New characters are suddenly introduced as if we were supposed to know them all along. Meanwhile, the less said about the godawful acting by the cast, the better.
Anyway, I know you’re here for an explanation of the whole thing and its ending. The main reason I’m blabbering so much is because I want to establish that a plausible explanation of The Vord is quite impossible. It shouldn’t even matter either, considering the movie has no shape or form. It just exists as a blob that I would want to forget about as early as possible. That said, I’m going to try to make sense out of this nonsense by moving forward. Needless to say, I’m mostly going to be interpreting things on my own here. Here we go.
Spoilers Ahead
What is the movie about?
It’s hard to come up with a viable answer to this even—that’s how terrible it is. I quite despise when explanatory articles start with lines like ‘the film begins with…’ and then describe every little and big thing, no matter how relevant they are. Here, though, I have no other choice but to follow that pattern. So it starts with two brothers—Eva and Sten, who couldn’t be more different from each other. The setting is many years before our time, in the eras of the Vikings. The brothers have a falling out thanks to Eva having an affair with Sten’s wife, Tove, who is killed by wolves (we don’t see the death, just the body). The brothers fight, and Eva ends up killing Sten. What I understand is some sort of curse gets bound to Eva after that, which keeps him alive for eternity. On the other hand, Sten becomes the ‘Vord’.
So what’s the deal with the Vord here? Well, it’s more like his brother’s deal. Eva is now a shadow who has made an agreement with the dark side, called Asatru (in simpler terms, an unseen evil). He has to deliver a woman with magical abilities to the Asatru. But here’s the thing: the woman has to be protected by Shadow/Eva’s brother, Vord/Sten. The woman in the question is called Maria. When we first see her, she is all happy and prancing around like a butterfly. Maria’s father is around, who asks her to never choose the easy way in life. That indicates he is either going somewhere far or dying—and it turns out to be the latter. We don’t get to know how or when it happened. Next we see Maria with her grandmother, and the little girl is asking the older woman to check if there’s any ghosts under the bed. This, I suppose, is the most logical scene in the whole movie. Anyway, there’s no ghost, but the Vord is omnipresent, and soon, Maria’s grandmother is gone.
Maria’s mother, Katrina, meanwhile, has joined the Asatru and promised them her daughter in exchange for an eternity of pleasure. Shadow/Eva (who now goes by the name Draugr – which is the Nordic term for ghost or spirit) is still running the show with a priest, Father Payne, at the forefront. There’s one interesting thing. Only Katrina is aware of Draugr; the priest can’t see him. Even though Draugr is practically deciding Payne’s every move by manipulating his thoughts (yeah, not much of a problem for a ghost, I suppose), the priest is not aware and thinks he’s acting of his own accord. Anyway, just like we never knew why Katrina joined the dark side, we also can’t fathom why she would suddenly have a change of heart. But that’s exactly what happens: Katrina decides to save Maria and takes her to Sister Reperata, who runs a church. It is never explicitly said, but it’s not hard to assume that Reperata is aware of what’s going on, and she obviously stands against the dark side. Much later in the movie, it is also revealed that Reperata’s son was actually Maria’s father, not that it makes any difference for the plot (nothing does, really). Thanks to her betrayal, the dark side punishes Katrina with death by drowning her in a lake; well, she walks into it on her own anyway (like she willingly accepts the punishment).
Does Maria join the dark side?
As it’s quite hard to differentiate between the first, second, and final act of the movie thanks to the screenplay being a mess, this (the subhead) is the only question that needs to be asked. Just like nothing in this movie is done well, the time jumps are also jarring, and you meet adult Maria, who’s now Sister Maria. And she appears to be perpetually distressed. The battle between Draugr and his brother is still going on. While Draugr seems way too productive—manipulating Payne and tormenting Maria in order to make her realize Asatru is the way of life—Vord is pretty much doing nothing. Of course, his presence is good enough to keep Draugr at bay and keep Maria away from danger.
There are several other characters introduced—father Clay, police officer Sam, and another woman, Jillian—only to add more confusion. You don’t really get who’s on whose side. My assumption here is Clay is definitely with Reperata (so he’s good), Jillian is on neither side, and she’s being used as a pawn, and Sam is supposed to be on the good side, but his loyalty keeps flipping. Perhaps that makes Sam the most exciting character, although it doesn’t do any good. As far as Maria joining the Asatru, no, that doesn’t happen. Draugr comes to the conclusion that he can’t win against his brother and asks for forgiveness. Vord gives him that instantly, telling him all he needed to do was ask for it. If only he had done that before, then this movie wouldn’t have been made, and we wouldn’t have had to suffer.
