The Vourdalak, 2024.
Directed by Adrien Beau.
Starring Kacey Mottet Klein, Ariane Labed, Grégoire Colin.
SYNOPSIS:
When the Marquis d’Urfé, a noble emissary of the King of France, is attacked and abandoned in the remote countryside, he finds refuge at an eerie, isolated manor. The resident family, reluctant to take him in, exhibits strange behaviour as they await the imminent return of their father, Gorcha. But what begins simply as strange quickly devolves into a full-fledged nightmare when Gorcha returns, seemingly no longer himself…
Myths and legends surrounding undead figures of vampires have proven to be a successful source of literary and cinematic retelling for centuries. Chief among them is Bram Stoker’s 1897 work Dracula with numerous cinematic retellings from Hammer Films with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing delighting audiences in vibrant blood-red.
The 1992 Francis Ford Coppola film with Gary Oldman also forged new paths for Drac. More recently, Nicolas Cage bared his fangs at Nicolas Hoult in Renfield (2023).
But well before the Count made his name, there was The Family of the Vourdalak. The story was originally written in French as an 1839 gothic novella by the celebrated Russian writer Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy.
Taking some cues from the Russian poet Pushkin, who coined the name Vourdalak as a distortion of Slavik and Balkan words for vampires – and possibly werewolves as well – Tolstoy imagines a family coping with the impact of the folkloric terror of an unexpected and terrifying change.
Later, the tale inspired the ‘I Wurdulak’ segment of the three-part Mario Bava film Black Sabbath (1963). An Italian/Spanish title from 1972, The Night of the Devils is also based on the Tolstoy story.
And so to bring us right up to date and back in time, we have Adrian Beau’s thoroughly entertaining The Vourdalak. Bursting with colour and bristling with dark humour, the film brilliantly showcases the tale of this proto-vampiric group.
The film is a wonderfully multi-layered piece focusing on the unworldly and already rather otherworldly (thanks to the 19th-century court-face-paint) figure of the Marquis D’Urfe as he arrives unexpectedly into the centre of European folk tradition. It explores the social interactions of the time, highlighting the vast differences between central European farmer families and the upper classes of Paris, and delivers a brilliantly orchestrated humorous dance of well-drawn characters.
The Marquis himself (played exquisitely as a well-meaning but rather naïve lord by Kacey Mottet Klein) is the bemused observer of a family in crisis. The ageing father of the clan has inadvisably gone to fight to defend their land, much to the chagrin of the eldest son Jegor (Grégoire Colin).
When Dad comes back, he certainly isn’t himself, and the unlikely bunch – also including the powerful daughter Sdenka (Ariane Labed) and younger sibling Piotr (Vassili Schneider) are forced to negotiate what happens next. One thing’s for sure, it isn’t going to be pretty. For the Marquis, it’s about as far away from the grandeur and haute culture of 19th century early Paris as he could get.
The film works as full-on earthy experience that brings the audience full-on into an ancient tradition that stretches right back to legends told at the fireside. Not wasting a minute of its hour and a half run time, it offers a feast for fans of gothic melodrama. Some thrills and scares are there as well, expertly presenting a folk story that at once respects the source material while having plenty of fun with it.
The Vourdalak arrives in cinemas on June 28th in the US.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Robert W Monk
