- Director: Adrien Beau
- Writer: Adrien Beau, Hadrien Bouvier
- Stars: Kacey Mottet Klein, Ariane Labed, Grégoire Colin, Vassili Schneider
REVIEW
Based on A.K. Tolstoy’s classic gothic novella, a proto-vampire story coming some fifty years before before Stoker’s Dracula, The Vourdalak really keeps to its gothic roots, mixing the horror, with the tragic.
The Marquis d’Urfé (Klein) is an emissary of the King of France. He’s attacked while riding through the remote countryside, leaving him in need of a horse so he can continue his journey. He is told that there is a home close by and he can ask for help there. The family that lives there is willing to help him as soon as their father, Gorcha, returns. His children have a prior warning from Gorcha that if he doesn’t come back within six days, he will be no better than the accursed vourdalak. When the father does end up coming home, he does not look human, nor act it.
As the Marquis spends more time at the family home, he finds out a little more about individual members of the family. Most of the family know that their father is the Vourdalak and that the Vourdalak craves the blood of family members.
Gorcha’s appearance as the Vourdalak is that of a puppet, and whilst this sounds hokey, it doesn’t come across this way, and it is fairly effective, very creepy, and unsettling.
Director Beau recognises the horror in the story without having to go to extremes to push that point home. Feeding us little drips and drabs of the horror underneath and the tragedy that dovetails with it. The nightmare sequences he puts together throughout the film really help set and maintain the tone of the film.
The Vourdalak is a refreshing take on a monster that has been built from the ground up time and time again. If this leads to more gothic horror in the future, then I’m all for it!
In select cinemas now.
Ryan Morrissey-Smith
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