Lúcio Reis Filho
The golden rule of Gothic tradition, and one that young Marquis d’Urfé painfully learns during his journey through mid-18th-century Eastern Europe, is that there are mysteries better left unspoken. Low on supplies and desperate for a place to rest, the French diplomat finds himself in the remote Serbian wilderness, at the homestead of a modest family whose patriarch—he soon discovers—is missing. His name is Gorcha, who has gone off to hunt a Turkish outlaw—a nod to the era when the Ottoman Empire was a looming power constantly clashing with Russia. However, an ancient legend warns if the master of the house doesn’t return within six days, he will transform into a “vourdalak,” a term related to vampires or werewolves drawn from old Balkan folklore. This sets the stage for Adrien Beau’s vampire film The Vourdalak (2023), the latest cinematic rendition of Aleksey Tolstoy’s 1839 novella, The Family of the Vourdalak.
Burial grounds along the way and the misty, silent woods immediately establish a Gothic atmosphere, leaning into the genre’s core conventions. From the jump, the imagery of this hostile environment signals that something in the world is deeply “out of joint.” As he pushes deeper into the thicket, Marquis d’Urfé (Kacey Mottet Klein) feels as if he’s treading back through time, drifting away from civilization and into a primitive, pre-modern era.
In the woods, the Frenchman first encounters the handsome Piotr (Vassili Schneider), Gorcha’s youngest son, who introduces him to the rest of the clan: his siblings are the enigmatic Sdenka (Ariane Labed) and the inflexible Jegor (Grégoire Colin). The latter, who is married to Anja (Claire Duburcq) and father to young Vlad (Gabriel Pavie), displays skepticism toward the legends of malevolent bloodsuckers. The former, in turn, represents paganism and the feminine bond with the forces of nature. Dressed in traditional Romani attire, she speaks in parables like a forest oracle, eventually becoming the object of the protagonist’s affection.
The Marquis is noticeably more “modern” than the peasant family, whose members seem to be stuck in the Middle Ages. By comparison, the nobleman is a dandy-esque figure who looks like he stepped straight out of the gilded halls of Dangerous Liaisons (1988). He is a Rococo porcelain trinket amidst the gloom and pastel tones, complete with buckled shoes, knee-high silk stockings, white breeches and vest, a turquoise frock coat, and a pale, ghostly face caked in makeup. This visual opposition allows The Vourdalak to draw a portrait of an impoverished Eastern Europe—one that feels more backward and underdeveloped compared to its Western neighbors of the same period. In this sense, the historical reconstruction is of impeccable accuracy.
The family waits anxiously for their patriarch, but there is something in the mise-en-scène that signals he won’t be coming back—at least, not among the living. The countless lit white candles scattered throughout the rooms of the stone manor serve as practical lighting for the oppressive set while turning the place into an altar for a requiem mass. In this French adaptation, Gorcha’s homestead is a mausoleum far more rustic and less refined than its counterpart in the second segment of Mario Bava’s 1963 Italian anthology film, Black Sabbath. The setting is considerably more primitive in the new version, standing in contrast to the untouched, pictorial beauty of the surrounding landscapes. To this end, The Vourdalak isn’t afraid to feel more grounded, leaning into a rawness that taps into the deepest folk roots of the Slavic vampire myth.
The family dinner scene—although set outdoors under the lingering sunlight typical of northern regions—evokes the sinister Sawyer banquet in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974). However, the sudden arrival of the missing member reveals to the keen eyes of a horror cinephile a character conspicuously absent from the table: the grandfather, pale and cadaverous like Tobe Hooper’s iconic patriarch, yet endowed with a strange, supernatural vitality. This is Gorcha, appearing at 6 o’clock sharp to the sound of bells and crows we never see. As Mark Fisher noted, “there is an intrinsically eerie dimension to acousmatic sound – sound that is detached from a visible source,” suggesting “the work of some hostile agent.” Gorcha’s presence is foreshadowed by sounds such as these, which intermittently disrupt the silence and displace the score’s melodic minuets.
The patriarch re-emerges as a decrepit, limping figure with little humanity left (if any). Unlike the imposing, flesh-and-blood Boris Karloff in Black Sabbath, the title character of The Vourdalak is a grotesque, life-sized puppet—a withered husk meticulously crafted by the production and voiced by the director himself. This is a bold creative choice. And as unexpected as it may seem, it is crystal clear that we aren’t dealing with one of Jim Henson’s more sympathetic Muppets; instead, this is a malignant, Nosferatu-like entity that doesn’t hesitate to reclaim control over its brood. After ordering Piotr to shoot the family dog dead, Gorcha tosses his hunting trophy onto the table: the severed head of his Turkish enemy—a grim nod to the atrocities of the Romanian prince Vlad III, one of the historical archetypes for the modern vampire. The alienated family, however, seems strangely incapable of fully perceiving or even acknowledging the chilling change in their father’s appearance.
As the days pass, tension mounts within the Gorcha household. The patriarch constantly vanishes; the French guest suffers through nightmarish visions that blur the line between dream and reality; eerie sounds echo through the night; and the family’s youngest member falls ill, much to his mother’s despair. Later, the boy Vlad slips away in the dead of night, only to be ensnared by his grandfather’s decaying claws. When he finally drains the boy’s blood, it’s in a scene of peerless beauty with an almost sacred aura: their bodies, the only objects bathed in light, are submerged in a deep black void—much like the subjects of a Baroque painting. It is worth noting that the peasant Gorcha, dressed in nothing but a white shroud, shatters the cinematic tradition of the vampire as a black-cloaked nobleman.
The film’s dialogue with the arts—specifically the tradition of European painting—deserves special mention. The misty landscapes create a sfumato effect which, combined with the vastness of the wide shots, tends to miniaturize the human element until it nearly vanishes. Medium shots featuring the protagonist perched on a cliff’s edge, facing the surrounding vastness with his back to the audience—a motif repeated throughout the film—serve as contemplative echoes of Caspar David Friedrich’s Romantic masterpiece, Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (1818).
The mostly static shots often frame motionless figures, forming tableaux vivants that seem to spring from the works of Baroque masters like Rembrandt, Vermeer, Caravaggio, and de La Tour. A good example is the sequence of iris shots, which place a circular frame within the rectangular screen. This technique, a progeny of optical and photographic devices like the monocle or the pinhole camera, is reminiscent of early cinema. In addition, the sparse, directional lighting that creates the chiaroscuro—the interplay of light and shadow central to this tradition—isolates figures amidst absolute darkness. Beyond these, the grainy texture lends an undeniable “art-house” quality to the imagery.
While the patriarch highlights the class divide and social chasm between the French nobleman and his own kin—whom he expects to be “manly” and warrior-like—Jegor reinforces the idea that the men of the family are “brutes,” with the exception of Piotr, his younger brother. From the start, there are hints that Piotr is “different,” perhaps too sensitive and handsome for a supposedly rustic, illiterate peasant, suggesting a queer subtext.
Nevertheless, on two occasions, while the family remains paralyzed by Gorcha’s hovering presence, it is the underestimated son who finally confronts the patriarch. In his first attempt, Piotr is humiliated and runs home in tears after being targeted by a homophobic slur. Later in the film, the strong-built yet delicate, twink-like young man appears shirtless, bearing smudged eye makeup, deep red lipstick, and a flower crown, in a climactic coming-out that ends in tragedy.
When young Vlad returns transformed, the contagion spreads and the fog swallows the entire homestead. Running for his life, the seemingly feeble Marquis manages to escape, only to return shortly after riding a white horse. Then, he scales the stone manor walls and enters Sdenka’s bedroom window to finally confront the vourdalak—appearing, at last, as a classic fairy-tale prince. However, in an unexpected turn, our accidental hero also falls prey to the vampire’s fangs. This is a Gothic tragedy, not a story with a happy ending.
The epilogue, both bleak and brilliant, keeps class struggle at the core of the vampire fiction, but this time flipping the script: we aren’t dealing with an aristocratic noble preying on the underprivileged, but rather its exact opposite. Here, the horror comes from the fringes. The closing text reveals the enthusiastic words of the Duchesse de Gramont, a French noblewoman who claims to have received at court “the most singular creature in the world”, a gracious, pale woman from distant lands. The woman is the final-girl Sdenka, whom we know has also been transformed—a fate that suggests, much like the epilogue of 28 Weeks Later (2007), a new scale for the contagion, this time at the very heart of France.
The message is dated to an unspecified year in the 18th century, a period looming under the shadow of the French Revolution, a deliberate historical anchor. After all, what was the Revolution if not a desperate uprising against a vampiric elite? For decades, the monarchy and the high clergy drained the peasantry’s lifeblood through exorbitant taxes and systemic neglect. In this light, this “horror from the fringes” suggests an inevitable subversion: the marginalized and the infected finally infiltrating the halls of Versailles. It also draws a chilling parallel to our present day, where the gap between the ultra-rich and the rest of humankind continues to widen, deepening inequality. Thus, the contagion isn’t just biological; it’s a social rot. By placing Sdenka—a figure of pagan, Romani, and “othered” roots—at the center of French nobility, the film suggests that no amount of privilege can insulate the elite when the systemic pillars they rely on begin to crumble.
The Vourdalak feels like a relic from another era. At first glance, some might say it evokes European horror of the 1970s or ‘80s. This is due to the rawness of the imagery, the tactile quality of the film stock, the artistic approach, and that signature Hammer-red blood. The decision to use Super 16mm over digital was an aesthetic choice by director Adrien Beau and cinematographer David Chizallet to achieve a grainy, soft-toned, and undeniable vintage look, heightening its gothic, folk horror atmosphere. There is also the slower pace, the non-frenetic editing, the static shots, and the classical score that give the film a tone, cadence, and structure that feel simultaneously “dated” and strangely fresh amidst the current profusion of high-concept, big-budget horror.
Yet, this offspring of folk horror and dark fantasy remains essentially contemporary, touching on present-day social issues and joining the growing trend of filmmakers returning to handcrafted techniques in an industry oversaturated with digital effects and AI prompts. It is an act of artistic resistance in the interplay of light and shadow, constantly subverting our expectations. Alongside Sinners (2025), this is arguably the best vampire film in recent years. It is proof that the creatures of the night always return. And what music they make!
