Review: "The Vourdalak" is a Gothic throwback with its own soul

by Nick Taylor

We love 19th century gothic horror, don’t we folks? One of the most durable subgenres of all time. Influential to our current understanding of what horror is and how to depict it in ways so finely woven into the genre we couldn’t possibly begin to disentangle it from contemporary media.

Director Adrien Beau, making his feature film debut with The Vourdalak following a handful of spooky shorts, has created a vampire film equally indebted to the rhythms and moods of the gothic novella and the style of a Hammer horror flick. There’s no self-aware pastiche, no riffing on the genre, just an immersive attempt to bring some very particular sensibilities back from the dead. After premiering at the 80th Venice Film Festival last year, The Vourdalak is getting a theatrical release this summer. It works beautifully, mordant and sensually detailed, and it’s exactly the kind of gem folks should remember from this part of the year when we’re overwhelmed by December releases...

The Vourdalak was originally written in 1839 by Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, a Russian writer and poet who was cousins with that other writer guy, Leo. Its story, as with many 19th century horror stories, follows a guy who saw some fucked up shit and somehow managed to escape unscathed. In this case, we have the Marquis Jacques Antoine Saturnin d’Urfe (Kacey Mottet Klein, recognizable as Anamaria Vartolomei’s one male confidant in Happening), a French nobleman who is part of an envoy through Eastern Europe. Just before the film starts. Jacques is robbed and left in the pouring rain without horse, companion, or money. A peasant directs him west to find a man named Gorcha who will give him provisions and a horse.

As it turns out, Gorcha is not home, and the Marquis is met by his family members - oldest son Jegor, Jegor’s wife Anja and child Vlad, youngest son Piotr, and only daughter Sdenka. They’re an attractive bunch to spend a horror film with, each with their own relationship to tradition, superstition, and family hierarchy. They reveal Gorcha has left behind a note stating he left to hunt the leader of a band of Turks who pillaged their village, and that if he does not return in six days then he has become something called a vourdalak, and must not be let back into the family house. Jegor is aghast at his father’s foolhardy actions, and finds the mention of this vourdalak too ridiculous to entertain. He will even continue to feel this way once Gorcha (played by director Beau) returns home - though the family patriarch has been undeniably transformed into a perversion of his former self, everyone is either too scared or too beholden to the traditions of the family structure to say it to his withered face.

The Vourdalak takes its time to establish narrative and character stakes. In keeping with Gothic tradition, the early passages walk a tricky line in evoking its milieu, as Beau immerses us in a bucolic vision of Eastern Europe and polluting it through a subtly wrong atmosphere. I can’t pretend to know whether the choices in costuming, makeup, set design, and vernacular displayed are in any way accurate to this milieu, but the impression is of a film adhering to period details while still operating in the archetypical strokes of a ghost story. Shooting on grainy 16mm and relying solely on natural light are two fantastic ways to impart weight onto any good film, especially when David Chizallet’s cinematography shows such care with camera placement and blocking. Choosing to take on a worthwhile aesthetic risk is one thing, but The Vourdalak backs those choices up with some genuinely impressive filmmaking.

I will not go into specifics about how the vourdalak itself is depicted. I will say it’s cool as fuck, and though other reviews will spill the beans if you’re so curious, I think it’s inspired enough to encourage you to go in blind. The creature’s desiccated form and jerky movements elevate the whole film into a dark fable about a diseased head of house who exerts the power to topple everyone he loves and keep them in line while he does it. There’s too much personality and intention to the monster, and no dialogue from the family indicates Gorcha is behaving radically out of character from the man he was in life. The power of filial loyalty  is never more strongly evoked than as a pretext for why it’s actually okay to embrace someone planning to rip out your throat. All the divides in Gorcha’s family will vanish once they’re all dead together. 

Another unusually strong bit is the Marquis himself, playing the role of an outsider stumbling onto someone else’s misfortune with more texture than you typically see in this genre. Translating a semi-blank POV character from literature into a worthwhile leading role for the silver screen is a challenge that’s felled films across all generic templates, yet The Vourdalak’s Marquis is its most defined characterization. Klein’s performance is a real asset, ensuring Jacques is more than a sniveling spectator but a watchful man with hormonal temperaments, one whose prowess with strategizing and maneuvering in the French courts has not given him the tools to understand this peasant family or the power structures keeping them from rebelling against Gorcha. Labed’s work is largely self-effacing, serving Beau’s designs so elegantly you’d be forgiven for not noticing him when his main screen partners are the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen and a domineering, somewhat sassy corpse.

The whole film succeeds quite elegantly, slinking under your skin and catching you by surprise at just how much the scares and the gore are genuinely startling. It’s a great time, and I hope folks get to see it.

The Vourdalak is receiving a limited release in the US starting this Friday, June 28th. 

Comments

[Gallavich]

The trailer screams Bava homage and I can't wait to see it

[Paul Mac]

The films looks fascinating. And it is interesting that the other comment mentions Bava. The short story was filmed once before as part of the 1963 Bava three story film Black Sabbath with Boris Karloff and was called the Wurdalak. It gave me nightmares when I saw it later on tv.