This new adaptation of Macbeth, in which Patrick Stewart and Kate Fleetwood reprise their roles as Lord and Lady Macbeth, brings the horror back into the play, promising gore and terror aplenty.  The witches, presented as nurses, are seen tearing the heart from a dying soldier in an early scene, and the play continues in this fashion: the murderer’s daggers replaced with hacksaws; Lady Macbeth’s delusions divulging images of blood pouring from taps; drenching her hands in bleach to ‘sweeten’ them; and the spirits of Act 4 realised as corpses writhing in body bags. All shot in what appears to be an abandoned hospital or basement, filled with demonic nurses and abandoned sick beds, reeking of the unheimlich.

Patrick Stewart’s Macbeth is a significantly less sympathetic portrayal than has been shown in recent years. A soviet-styled dictator, Stewart’s cavernous voice and haggard features lend themselves to this brutal, abrasive Macbeth. When other Macbeths have been shown to weep, this hero often laughs, with ‘At least we’ll die with harness on our back’, reframed as ridicule thrown in the direction of Lady Macbeth’s corpse. Director Rupert Goold appears to have adapted as much as possible of the play to make the character of Macbeth more vicious and less pitiable; his interpretation even sees Stewart taking part in the murder of Macduff’s (played brilliantly by Micahel Feast) family, brandishing a serrated knife.

Kate Fleetwood’s Lady Macbeth is mesmerising. Perhaps the most convincing portrayal since Judi Dench played her alongside Ian McKellen, Fleetwood’s performance teeters between sanity and derangement from the outset. This atmosphere of a slow descent into madness, the darkening of spirit and the blinding of morality, is given impetus by the disquieting setting. Long shots down hallways steadily sink into darkness, dank and shadowed corners lurk at the edge of every scene - behind Lady Macbeth as she soliloquizes, or surrounding the Porter as he equivocates at Hell’s gates. With Banquo’s ghost come flashes of ghoulish facial expressions - grins or grimaces - framed under a spotlight amid total darkness. Indeed, the veil of resolution normally cast over the end of the play is itself disrupted, the last shot being of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, descending in a lift through an unknown and impenetrable darkness; their descent ceaseless even in death.

It is details such as this disturbance of the ending that give the film a new and vital feel. Rupert Goold has managed to insert some unexpected action into one of the canon’s best-known and best-loved plays. Macbeth’s ‘warlike shield’ is transformed into a bottle of spirit he pours over himself, his last act of defiance reduced to Dutch courage. Macduff is gunned down within seconds of seeing Macbeth, proving victorious only through Macbeth’s willing capitulation. The last word spoken by Macbeth, ‘enough’, is taken out of its original context, and employed as a meek sigh of resignation directed at the witches, who appear throughout.

There is a danger with Shakespeare adaptations that, as Macduff articulates, ‘old garments’ may ‘fit more easily than [our] new’. Perhaps, the greatest achievement of this version is that it has breathed new life into the play. One is hesitant now to cast an eye into the past to find Macbeth, but rather waits in anticipation for the future.