Le 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.

If the title sounds familiar, it's probably because you recognize "wurdulak" as the word for the vampire in Mario Bava's Black Sabbath. This is another version of that story by A. K. Tolstoy, and it's a peculiar mix of folk horror and vampire myth. It's slow - Bava told the story in 1/3 the time - but very enjoyable, with a charming performance by. Kacey Mottet Klein as Marquis Jacques Antoine Saturnin d'Urfe, prancing around the Russian forest in his powdered face, beauty spot, wig and stockings. Imagine Barry Lyndon in The Company of Wolves. If you like your vampires on the European weirdness side, give this a watch!

Based on Tolstoy's La Famille du Vourdalak, where a vampire from Slavic folklore returns to feed off his own family, Adrien Beau's feature film debut Le Vourdalak follows the Marquis d'Urfé, an emissary of the King of France, finding haven in the house of a peculiar family where he expects to receive a horse to continue his journey.

Visually, it evokes the feeling of being in a fairytale due to its aesthetics resembling those of the past. There's charm and a sense of magic in them. The house and the woods add a haunting yet beautiful aura to the story that enhances its fantasy qualities. Due to the choices it makes when it comes to VFX, opting for practical effects with props instead of CGI, it achieves a slapstick humor that can also be scary at times (puppets, for instance).

It's not everyday that a film succeeds in combining genres so different as horror and comedy, but Le Vourdalak does it from beginning to end, making it worth watching.

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.

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".