Semya Vurdalakov (1990)

directed by Igor Shavlak and Gennady Klimov
Russia/Soviet Union
82 minutes
3.5 stars out of 5
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This is a vampire movie from the Soviet Union, and I can't find out whether it's actually from Russia or one of the countries that are now separate from the SU. The dialogue is in Russian, anyway. When we talk about vampires in this case, we're talking the old-school, Eastern-European conception of a vampire, not the vampire that pop culture has produced in the West. A lot of the characteristics of the vampire(s?) in Semya Vurdalakov bear little to no resemblance to what's typically thought of as a vampire, and in fact probably the only recognizable thing is a scene where we see a few drops of blood on an unconscious boy's neck.

At one point I actually got to thinking about the emphasis horror movies place on showing evil or dangerous characters walking differently from everybody else, and I had something longer and more thought out to write about that, but now it doesn't sound like it makes any sense. I was just wondering why we read so much into a person walking very slowly, with heavy footsteps, maybe some shuffling, too. A person walking at normal speed can be a normal person but slow them down and give them some Doc Martens and suddenly they're a menacing ghoul stalking around in the moonlight. As with most things, this probably stems from fear of disability, but it's one of the stranger byproducts of that fear and one of the least easily recognizable as such.

Semya Vurdalakov starts off relatively bright and cheery, and our main character, insofar as we know anything about him at all, seems to be a pretty happy, work-oriented guy. On assignment, he goes to visit a family in a rural farmhouse where somebody has just died, and that's where the whole movie changes dramatically. It may have been intentional, but the contrast between the "before" picture of the protagonist as a sunny go-getter immersed in his work and the "after" of an unshaven, unkempt, haunted-looking guy living with a family who doesn't really want him there is very jarring. Also, there's a good deal about this movie that I just had no idea what to make of, so forgive me if I kind of glaze over certain details that I didn't quite catch.

I don't feel as bad about missing those details as I normally would, because this movie is about 99.9% atmosphere. And what an atmosphere it is- like I said, it only kicks in once the main character leaves the city, but before too long this film is in the domain of shifting darkness, creaking wooden floors, whispered prayers in the night, and a flimsy, often invisible line between "living" and "dead". I still don't know what was going on at any point during this but it's perfect viewing for a cold, damp, dark night. There's been eerie Russian films before but this one feels unlike most I've seen.