Having been attacked by Turkish bandits while travelling through an Eastern European forest, French nobleman the Marquis Jacques Antoine Saturnin d'Urfé (Kacey Mottet Klein), an emissary of the King of France, seeks assistance at the isolated home of an elderly man called Gorcha.
The man of the house is absent though and the Marquis instead meets his children: the eldest son, surly Jegor (Grégoire Colin), crossdresser Piotr (Vassili Schneider) and ethereal "fallen woman" Sdenka (Ariane Labed). Also present are Jegor's wife, Anja (Claire Duburcq) and their young son, Vlad (Gabriel Pavie).
The Marquis d'Urfé discovers that the elderly Gorcha left the house six days earlier to go fight the invading Turks, warning that if he returned after six days he would be a "vourdalak" and his family were not to let him in.
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| The Marquis (Kacey Mottet Klein) and Sdenka (Ariane Labed) |
That evening, while the residents of the manor are dining outdoors, Jegor discovers what appears to be the corpse of his father, lying at the edge of the property.
However the old man (voiced by the film's writer and director Adrien Beau) is alive. Kind of.
This is where things start to get really weird. Despite Jegor's refusal to believe in folk stories, his father, Gorcha, is, indeed a vourdalak, an undead corpse-like being that's part vampire, part ghoul, that thrives by feeding on its loved ones (rather than random strangers).
However, that's not the weirdest part of this darkly, atmospheric Gothic French movie. It's the fact that Gorcha is portrayed by a life-sized skeletal puppet (also operated by Adrien Beau), with a limited range of movement.
Luckily, I had been forewarned about this fact, as it comes as quite a surprise when it pops up in this grounded, period piece, set in the 18th Century.
Yet oddly, once you've adjusted your brain to the idea that the antagonist of this claustrophobic horror tale isn't an actor in a rubber suit or a CGI creation, it is a rather effective depiction of a creature that's alien to our reality and yet was once human.
This isn't Muppet Christmas Carol territory, but something much creepier and more unnerving (more so even than the spooky Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come).
Coming in at under 90-minutes duration, The Vourdalak is a fascinating French-language work of oppressive horror, where the tension ratchets up methodically to a gory climax.
What could have come across as a "silly experiment" on paper, is, in actuality, an eerie and atmospheric movie about a largely unseen supernatural predator preying on his own family, trapped on their own estate by both familial loyalty and fear of the Turkish invaders.
While our POV character, the foppish Marquis starts the tale as "powdered courtier" and a bit of an ass, his story arc sees him grow a backbone - partly motivated by his attraction to Sdenka - to just about become the tale's hero.
Based up the 19th Century novel The Family of the Vourdalak, by Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy (second cousin of the more famous Leo Tolstoy), the film is an interesting twist on the ubiquitous vampire mythology and is worth watching for that alone.
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