Viy - La maschera del demonio

I've seen several recent fantasy and sci-fi Russian movies and they all feel like the story is a badly assembled jigsaw. Is it that the Russian story makes sense and somehow they can't translate to English? I think that's unlikely. Viy is a strange combination of Dracula and Sleepy Hollow, with a few English actors to make it mainstream, but the rest, including cinematography, is Russian. Jason Flemyng plays the main character, an English scientist having to deal with Slavic superstition in "uncivilized" Russia (yes, it's not Transilvania, which is in Romania, I would have hoped Russians at least knew that), with Charles Dance in a few irrelevant scenes.

The idea was interesting, the special effects nice, but it felt like something was terribly wrong with the assembly of the scenes and the dialogues. You probably have to watch in Russian (if a version even exists).

Poor Nikolai Gogol... The British empire came to "put order" in the East, eradicating the Ukrainian folk from his masterful long tale "Vij". This is an overlong, convoluted, revisionist version of Gogol's story, reducing the fantasy elements to dumb babble passing for "scientific" explanations of the beliefs and fears of an agrarian, superstitious community in Transylvania during the 18th century. Better watch the 1967 "Vij" or Mario Bava's masterful, free adaptation "La maschera del demonio" (1960).

I liked the movie. When I was going to see it I had already known that it was not a screen version of Nikolai Gogol's story but "a movie based on it". That's why I was not disappointed as some people who went to the theatre to see just a new version of 1967 "Viy". Because it is not.

This new "Viy" took the same legend from the book (based on a Slavic folklore legend), the same characters, the same location - a small Ukrainian out-of-the-way village, added some new characters , CGI (quite good), shuffled everything, sprinkled it with humour (sometimes dark)and eminently suitable music. And as a result, we have an interesting mystic story definitely worth watching.

Forbidden Kingdom is surreal and pragmatic at the same time. Its a disorienting mix that mostly works, even though it probably should not.

There's a lot of fantastical, hellish fantasy elements in this film, that have a rather medieval feel to them. Horned demons, winged sprites and variety of other bizarre creations. This sits alongside a rather pragmatic tale of rationalism with an inexplicable, religious twist.

The acting seems reasonable but I feel a lot has been lost in translation. Its pretty clear the Russian component of this film has been dubbed. As a result I suspect is a lot of the meaning conveyed in Russian that would help to fully explain the story has been lost. As a result, for English speakers like myself, this film may have a disjointed feel to it. There is no clear segue between the scenes that make up the story and as a consequence no sense of cohesion and unity in the overall story itself.

Its worth briefly mentioning the cinematography used in this film. Its truly exceptional and really gives this film great visual depth and beauty.

All in all, for a non Russian audience this film may be a little too difficult to grasp and fully appreciate. As I said, the English translation does this film no favours. As a result its hard for me to offer an unequivocal thumbs up. That said, this is still a highly original and very creative film, reminiscent of works by Tim Burton. As such, I would suggest its still worth your time. Seven out of ten from me.

"Viy", a.k.a. "Forbidden Empire" is a fantasy film with a confused story about a British cartographer that flees from England (actually from his future father-in-law) expecting to raise a fortune in the East to marry his beloved girlfriend but finding a cursed place. The film has wonderful special effects but is hard to be followed since the pretentious screenplay is not well-written and is totally disconnected with many plot points.

The 1967 film is a Russian classic horror movie and a little gem. However this unnecessary remake is a complete mess and difficult to understand which the target audience is. My vote is three.

Title (Brazil): "A Lenda" ("The Legend")