Monday, October 17, 2022

Vampyr

Well today mostly sucked but a horror movie and food will cure most ails.



I'm not really sure how to convey my opinions on this film, I feel I'd just be describing scenes and moments and not give much input. Not that it's bad, or dull, or boring, but it is weeeeeird. Okay, so the movie was made in 1932 in Germany, and it's almost a silent film. Doesn't make much sense but the movie pretty much breathes bizarre. It's like 80% silent film with text cards and all, yet the other 20% has a bit of dialogue and sound effects not counting the musical score of course. So the story follows a traveller named Allan Gray who gets embroiled in a bunch of very strange happenings. Shadow people roam the hotel he's staying at, he keep hearing noises that have no origin, and may have unwittingly met a blood sucking fiend. So pretty far from your typical vampire movie by every stretch of the definition, the movie barely clocks in at over an hour and feels more like a prolonged nightmare than a cohesive story driven plot. Which makes it tricky to talk about so this will get scatterbrained but here were a few of my observations. It took me over half the film to put my finger on it but our main character reminded me of someone and it finally dawned on me he looks like H.P. Lovecraft, and once I saw that it was a bit hard to stop. The nightmare sequence where Allan experiences being in his coffin and carried to the cemetary is super effective with POV shots and almost disorientating movement. I felt the eerie quality was felt throughout, and did have a few brief moments where the creeps were rolling over me. The movie has a fair bit to owe to the german expressionism genre, and I'll admit even though the effect of the shadow people is ridiculously simple to figure out at the same time I was like, how did they do that? I kinda like the fact you have no idea who the vampire is until the end, because it's not an obvious Max Shreck/Bela Lugosi look so it keeps a decent mystery about it. Also the lore presented is very different, like never heard of in my entire life kinda lore concerning the creatures of the night, which makes sense because this is still very early days for that idea to set roots down. It's incredibly different, and I'm sure not everyone is gonna grasp it and find it entertaining in it's own way but I'm happy I finally got to see it. I give it 3 stars, 7/10, and we'll dip fully into the silent era next time.

No comments:

Post a Comment