We talk about atmosphere a lot when discussing horror films, particularly when we’re trying to articulate something about the way a film affected us without singling out a specific idea or technique. Horror is, by the very nature of the emotions it’s trying to provoke in us, an imprecise and very subjective space, which makes the word “atmosphere” quite useful. Like a particularly vivid nightmare or the act of falling in love, we might not be able to recount exactly why it works for us, but we know it when we feel it, and it’s intoxicating.
And “intoxicating” is a very good word to describe the particular atmosphere of The Vourdalak, the feature directorial debut of writer/director Adrien Beau which finally arrives in theaters this year after premiering in Venice last summer. Though it certainly does not stray far enough from it source material to remove all sense of plot from its tale of an undead creature stalking a country house, it’s a film utterly and unabashedly devoted to creating a visual and sonic tone that you can’t, and don’t want to, escape. Its atmosphere, particular though it is, arrives like a dark, rich cloud of psychoactive smoke, and while it’s hard to pin down exactly why it works so well, it’s also the kind of film that makes you want to try.
Adapted from Aleksey Tolstoy’s legendary novella The Family of the Vourdalak (which also served as the basis for one third of Mario Bava’s Black Sabbath back in 1963), the film follows a French aristocrat (Kacey Mottet Klein) as he gets lost in the countryside of Eastern Europe while on a diplomatic mission for the King. His search for help leads him to an isolated family with problems of their own. The eldest son, Jegor (Gregoire Colin) tells the young Marquis that he, his wife Anja (Claire Duburcq), and his siblings Piotr (Vassili Schneider) and Sdenka (Ariane Labed) are waiting for their patriarch, a man known only as Gorcha, to return from fighting the Turks. But it’s not a simple wait for good news or bad, because Gorcha gave his family an odd warning. If he didn’t return in six days, they should consider him dead. If he returned after six days, they should consider him something worse: An undead creature craving the blood of those closest to him.
Naturally, Gorcha does return, and it’s clear right away that something is wrong. Though some members of his family refuse to see it, Gorcha (voiced and puppeteered by Beau) has the appearance of a walking corpse, a shadow of a man that looks more like something out of a Mike Mignola comic than a human form. It’s very clear that something monstrous has arrived at the family home, and if the young nobleman hopes to survive the ordeal, he must learn as much as he can about the people who’ve taken him in, and the being they used to call their patriarch.
Beau worked for major fashion houses like Dior before moving into genre filmmaking, and his eye for textural detail and sumptuous color is present throughout The Vourdalak‘s haunting tale, which proceeds patiently through the phases of horrific discovery as the Marquis and the family who’ve taken him in slowly realize the depth of the nightmare they’re living. The sense of dread that comes with the slow-burn story is palpable, but there’s also a wit to the film that emerges in the visual details and then grows to encompass the characters.
The Marquis, with his powdered face and carefully groomed manner learned in the French royal court, is an avatar of beautifully outfitted yet misguided aristocracy, a picture of modernity thrown into the old world where such things have less value. The bright blue of his coat contrasts with the more earthy tones of the family’s wardrobe, giving him a sense of cosmopolitan energy that’s misplaced to the point of a comedy of manners, and yet his pale face makes him in some ways more like the title creature than anyone else in the film. It’s a remarkable feat of visual precision, and it’s further underlined by the other characters in the piece, particularly Sdenka, with her jewels and bells and dress stained at the sleeves and the hem with green grass marks. Green, like blue, is another key color in the film, arguably the key color even when blood starts to spill, as Beau surrounds the viewer with vibrant natural life to underline the unnatural forces at work within the picturesque landscape. All of this is rendered not in the digital realm, but in beautiful Super 16 mm film, lending not just a lively grain to the images, but a color saturation that calls to mind everything from French Impressionist paintings to films like Ridley Scott’s The Duellists and Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon.
The human performances within this beautifully choreographed, tightly controlled drama are wonderful, particularly from Klein and Labed, but we can’t go any further without talking about the Vourdalak himself. There is a deliberate, immediate sense of artifice at work in his design, which only adds to the uncanny terror he provokes in every scene. It’s clear from the first frames of his appearance that he’s not meant to look like a human, or even really a monster wearing a human skin. He is a moving corpse, a revenant in every sense, and it’s this design that provokes the film’s most frightening ideas. We as an audience can plainly see that this vourdalak has no semblance of human life left in the way he talks, the way he moves, the way he presides over his former family, and we can see that the Marquis also sees this. What’s frightening, beyond the visual thrill of this contrast, is the feeling that other characters can’t see it, that a monster is walking among them in an almost cartoonish way and they are, somehow, blind to what’s happening. We have all, at some point in our lives, had the sense of that we are alone with our fears, that something is unfolding in ways only we can truly perceive, and everyone else is either blind or crazy or both. If you’ve ever felt it, you know it’s a feeling that sticks with you forever.
The Vourdalak is a movie with a lot to offer, from its visuals to its performances to its classic vampiric metaphors, but its greatest success is provoking that feeling, the sense that only we can see the true horror until it’s too late. That makes it one of the year’s most effective and haunting horror films, and a must-see twist on vampire lore for genre devotees.
The Vourdalak is now in theaters.
