If you ever wished that “Barry Lyndon” were more like a Hammer film, boy do I have one for you!
Based on a novella by Aleksey Tolstoy from 1839, “The Vourdalak” (2023) certainly takes a novel approach to its monster. I won’t spoil it here, and hopefully you won’t either. In fact, I will say as little about it as possible (try not to read any reviews or watch the trailer), because it will retain its greatest potency if you go into it cold.
I will say, it totally has a ‘60s/’70s historical horror vibe, in the best possible ways. Yes, it’s in French, and you will have to read subtitles, but it’s so absorbingly executed you’ll soon forget, and in any case the situations speak the universal language of nightmares.
Adrien Beau’s debut feature is thoughtfully staged, shot, and paced, with an emphasis on practical effects over CGI. Furthermore, it manages to be both quirky and amusing without undermining the genre’s inherent sense of foreboding. I knew I was in good hands from the start, first with the classic-looking Oscilloscope Laboratories logo, and then a traveler’s shadow, cast by lightning on a stormy night, framing the face of a suspicious local, who denies him access while peering through a Judas door.
At a lean 90-minutes, “The Vourdalak” is nevertheless leisurely paced (seductively shot in grainy Super 16 mm). It oozes with atmosphere and earns its chills with episodes of mounting, surreal dread. Don’t go into it expecting breakneck editing or vertiginous handheld cameras.
Any vampire movie worth its bloodletting emerges from the shroud of subtext. Here, scented glove and periwig brush up against Central European superstition. Beau shifts the focus from Tolstoy’s xenophobia – Ottoman invaders as agents of vampirism – with metaphoric observations on questionable family dynamics (old school patriarchy, before it became a political buzzword, at its most destructive) and the uncertainty with which we may relate to those who have just returned from war.
If you are fond of the Herzog version of “Nosferatu” or, more recently, Robert Eggers’ “The Witch” or “The Lighthouse,” you might want to give this one a shot. (Parenthetically, Eggers’ remake of “Nosferatu” is due in theaters on December 25th.) I streamed it on Kanopy, which allows free access with a library card, but it’s also available on other streaming platforms.
As a rule I do not like new movies, much less new horror movies. This one receives a respectful tip of the tricorn hat from Classic Ross Amico.
