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‘The Vourdalak’ Review: Mood and Marionettes Make for a Pleasingly Odd French Vampire Drama
'The Vourdalak,' Adrien Beau's adaptation of a novella that predates 'Dracula,' is impressively forward-thinking.
After premiering in Venice last year, the film arrives in theaters less than a week after the trailer for “The Witch” helmer Robert Eggers’ “Nosferatu” remake dropped — a coincidence, surely, but one that’s nevertheless emblematic of the ur-texts’ enduring influence. A stranger introducing himself as an emissary of the King of France (Kacey Mottet Klein) loses his way while traveling through a remote village and is refused entry from the first home he asks for help one misty night, though he is given parting advice in the form of a warning not to stop until reaching his destination. The situation deteriorates faster than the not-quite-corpse, with “The Vourdalak” morphing into a fairly conventional vampire narrative in its second half while still feeling closer to something like Albert Serra’s “Story of My Death” (which imagines a conversation between Dracula and and aging Casanova) than it does to “The Last Voyage of the Demeter.” Everything about the film manages to be forward-thinking and old-school at the same time, giving the genre a bite in the neck it might not have wanted but certainly needed.
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