Strigoi

Unfortunately this is a hard to find movie, but trust me if u ever get a chance you'll certainly enjoy it!

The plot starts where our hero young doctor returns from his internship in Italy to his in-the-middle-of-nowhere village. He finds that a kind of weird old man has been dead. In Romanian tradition when someone dies his friends must stay up with the dead body for three full days, just to make sure that nothing goes out of the way...! He sees five villagers staying up and drinking next to its coffin. But, they hardly liked the dead man. And this is where all creepiness starts taking place...

Through out the film everyone seems emotionless, they all talk slowly, amazing things happen and they act like it's everyday routine. This bizarre non linear beat of the movie is what makes it creepy and kind of disturbing. To add to all this bizarre world comes moments of dancing to Bregovic music...!!

If you ever been to Eastern Europe you do get that weird feeling as if everything is heavier than it should be and that people do have this distinct- chilly- unemotional tone in their voice. It always creep me out, and that's exactly what I got from this film.

Certainly a gem, certainly out of the ordinary and a great idea to watch an "original" Romanian take on vampires. If u get a chance, do watch it!

I'm surprised that this movie got such a high score. I was really interested in this movie after reading the plot, and seeing the images on the back. But the moment the talking and acting started, I knew this was going to be pretty bad. Not only did they choose to replace the real native language with silly accents in English, removing a lot of the credibility, but the accents are so laughably bad that I just could not take this seriously. The acting was, most of the time, really stiff and unbelievable. To me it seemed like some of the actors where actually good at acting, but couldn't mimic the accent properly. Most of them spoke in one monotonous tone all the time.

This movie had a lot of potential, because I found it very well shot and the characters and environments sure looked just right. The music is good and the make-up really good, but it's all lost in a very confusing and slow-moving story. There are so many unanswered questions, plot holes, random happenings and unexplained behaviour that it just feels like they tried their best to make this a confusing mess, even though the story as a whole don't seem that advanced or deep. I also felt that they could have used the setting more to their advantage, to create a creepier and more eerie feeling. There where a few pretty hilarious moments, I'll definitely give them that, but it did not make the movie worth the watch.

Now if you're a fan of vampires, horror, dark comedy, gore, intelligent, political, or just plain good movies, stay away. This movie seemed to promise it all(except the gore), but delivers on none.

I've just recently seen Strigoi at the Toronto After Dark Film Festival and was absolutely surprised at how good the film was. The trailer I had seen for the film made it seem like a very low budget, campy, been there done that vampire film. What I was shown was a well produced, professional, good looking film with an interesting vampire story. As an added bonus, there are some funny moments and good jokes mixed in throughout the film so that it doesn't come off stale.

The only real problem I had with the film was the slow pacing and longer than necessary runtime. Had the film been cut down by 10-20 minutes, I think it would become 100 times more enjoyable.

I was surprised to find out that the film has technically been done since early in the year but had only now, played in front of an audience. I am lucky to say I was able to catch this little gem at it's world premiere.

I hope to see more from this talented writer/director in the future and wish Strigoi all the best. With no big name actors, it may be a hard sell which is a damn shame. Genre fans need to see this film. In a genre where the market is flooded with the taste du jour and the films often leave a bad taste in your mouth, Strigoi serves up a platter of delicious offerings genre fans are sure to eat up.

NOT a vampire film. That's the first and most important fact you should know before watching. Second, it's a rather dry if not dull film that sparkles with just enough charisma to pull off an above average effort. The acting is fine, in fact it's pretty good. Yes, they are Romanians speaking in English but their accents are not hard to comprehend. At least I had no problem following them. This isn't a knee slapper type of comedy. I can't imagine the personality that would label this a comedy to be honest. It's just not funny. Amusing? Sure. Funny? I didn't laugh once. I smiled...the cast has a sort of neurotic charm that fuels your desire to reach the end. Don't watch it expecting to unearth a great vampire movie that no one else has seen. Watch it expecting a murder mystery with Romanian vampire mythology thrown in the mix as a sort of seasoning. Lower your expectations created by a few people that are raising an unrealistic bar and you might enjoy it more then others. Or you might be bored stiff. It's just that type of movie.

When the villagers killed Constantin Tirescu, they thought it was justice. Vlad Cozma thinks it was murder. Now Constantin thinks pickles might go nice with blood.

Dennis Harvey at Variety called it "drolly funny if a tad long-winded". I think he is right on both points. Second one first -- coming in around 104 minutes, I think shaving ten minutes off would help the pacing and get more of an audience. Not saying it drags, but it could be faster.

First point second, it is quite funny, in an offbeat way. Romanians doing a conga line to "Spirit in the Sky", old men asking if Italy has nice pizza (it does, and ice cream, too). And weird comments like a character being "too ***** to stick his finger up my ***." The fast food nightmare scene was excellent, too, both funny and sickening at the same time.

Faye Jackson says, "Romanian is a language that uses a lot of word play and slang and my Romanian simply isn't good enough to write dialogue that sounds like Romanian as it's spoken. So I had to write it in English." She has been asked why it was not in Romanian since they filmed it there and it starred Romanians. Perhaps the right thing to do would be to get a new director, but since Jackson did so well, that seems unnecessary in hindsight.

The gore is commendable, very good and not too gross for a horror film, especially the scene with the police officer. I am not entirely clear why the cop has born without ribs, though. (I suppose he might have been born with ribs and had them removed later, but it is still weird.) I am waiting to see what Faye Jackson does next. The director's next project is "sort of Dirty Pretty Things meets the A Team, except nothing like that at all". Wow. Yep, wow.