The Vourdalak

LE VOURDALAK (The Vourdalak) poses as the debut full lenght feature film of newcommer French director Adrien Beau. I was lucky enough to catch this film on the 64th Thessaloniki International Film Festival. From its very first shot LE VOURDALAK feels like a film made between the late 60s and early 70s somewhere between Central and Eastern Europe. It combines the atmosphere of those regions and times perfectly, managing to transcend the viewer in a wondrous place in the woods, constantly evoking the idea that something evil lurks there.

LE VOURDALAK explores the idea/legend of the vampire with a much more traditional, unique approach in comparison with the many vampire movies that we've been used to in the past years. Drawing his essence from Tolstoy's classic gothic novella, "The Family of the Vourdalak", Adrien Beau crafts a unique take on the vampire legend with samples of practical effects, performative acting, experimental montage and ordinary horror musical elements.

In its core, the film offers a daring, enchanting, tragic horror tale that, at times, is caught between the realisation of its classic background tale and the exaggeration of its daring fresh approach. Meaning that, yes, the story is based on a classic legend, in which Beau paints with his own gothic imagination, that strays from its horrific nature and leans more on the dramatic aspect of a tragic story.

This is a very watchable adaptation of one of the earliest vampire novels, The Family of the Vourdalak, written by Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, cousin of Leo; a gothic novella written in French. Stoker's Dracula was first published in 1897. Polidori's The Vampyre, acknowledged by many as the first dastardly tale, was 1819.

The film is a French one, directed by Adrien Beau, set at the time it was written, and staying quite close to the text of the book. It's Beau's directorial debut, and a fine way for him to announce himself.

Lost deep in a Slavic forest after a malfunction of his carriage, a French travelling aristocrat is taken in by a strange family which he initially fears are being terrorised upon by a vicious vampire.

As becomes clear, and is not a spoiler, the vampire, or Vourdalak, is actually the elderly father of the family, who behaves in a bizarre way from the outset.

The story is told initially at a slow pace, which it deserves, but increases in tempo until a splendid gory finale. Controversially amongst some reviewers, is that the Vourdalak is played by a puppet, voiced by the director himself. For me it works fine, though there is some disagreement amongst other viewers. The old man's appearance is key to the film, and it's difficult to know how else he could have been portrayed. Puppets or dolls have an established place in folk-horror, and this chilling and cadaverous addition is most welcome.

It's an atmospheric gothic tale with a good helping of Slavic folklore.

This movie deserves a much higher rating than the 5.8 it currently has on IMDB. It's a black-comedy vampire yarn based on same Tolstoy story Mario Bava adapted in the movie Black Sabbath, where the Vourdalak was played by a green-faced Boris Karloff. (The Vourdalak is based on a type of vampire from Slavic legend who returns from the dead to haunt and feed of of his own family.) The acting in this adaptation is superb and it is dripping with deadpan comic sensibility, placing it in the same general class as The Invisible Man, Bride of Frankenstein, Evil Dead, Drag Me to Hell and other movies whose greatness derives from the fact that they play as well as comedies as they do as horror films. The actors are all well directed and have great chemistry, with the elegant, dark electrifying pathos of Ariane Labed's performance dominating the screen. Costumes and makeup are top-notch, the sets are great, the lighting and camerawork is well-done and the editing is tight, efficient and deftly paced. As far as the monster itself - well, I won't spoil that surprise for you.

It's just a rilly rilly entertaining hidden gem that will delight veteran horror enthusiasts.

I wasn't sure what I was to expect when I first started watching this movie other than a French vampire movie, what I found was an enchanting gothic tale of love and loss.

The movie is an underrated achievement in these days of digital film making. Filmed in 16mm, and using old school practical effects, it looks wonderful like it came from 60 years ago. The Vourdalak is an amazing creation, a marionette, which gives it a completely otherworldly appearance and way of moving, capable of being both real and supernatural at the same time.

It's not just the way the movie looks that is intriguing but the way it is written, directed and acted as well. It has a very stage play style of writing and acting, everything is a little over dramatic, less trying for realism, and more for drama it might come off as campy to some, if you know where this movies heart is you understand it's not campy.

I don't get the other reviews of it being a comedy, even a black comedy. Perhaps they feel it's being campy with its puppetry and old school ways, and not realizing that it is trying for a style of movie that doesn't exist anymore like Viy, The Old Dark House, and Black Sunday.

A number of reviews seem to consider the film a dark comedy. While the main character behaves a bit foolishly at times and the vourdalak's looks maybe lack finesse, I didn't see it that way myself, so I thought I'd share my two cents.

From old Russian, Czech, and maybe also Polish scary movies (made roughly some time before the late 80s) that I have seen, the style of the vourdalak's appearance in this film makes me think this was done as an homage.

There's just something about it and the entire film... The closest movie I can think of that this feels similarly creepy to is "Viy", an old Russian movie. (If you've seen that movie and liked it, by the way, then you'll probably like this. If you liked this movie, then you should definitely try to check that one out.)

I might be totally wrong, but this movie felt like it was from another time, maybe also because the creature was real (be it makeup or a puppet, it was a practical effect) and not cgi. (Nothing wrong with digital effects, mind you; I rather love them all.)

The only hint of modernity in this was a jump scare at one point.

Other than that, this movie could have fit right in among the other strange creepy movies in the box set called "All the Haunts Be Ours".