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Horror-movie review: Strigoi (2009)
Strigoi
directed by Faye Jackson
TL;DR: A wonderful dark comedy involving Eastern European politics, small town isolation, and vampires. A must-see for lovers of indie-horror looking for something truly different.
I'm not even sure how to describe this movie.... Faye Jackson has essentially turned at least three genres on their heads making this. At first, this seems like a murder mystery rooted in a backwards small Romanian town where everyone knows everyone, but the decades of political and social upheaval in the 20th century have contributed at least as many bad memories as good. Then it seems like religious-horror tale about a Christian sect gone horribly wrong. And then it sounds like the entire premise is really a backdrop against the real plot, about a devious scam that the murders were went to cover up. But then, those murder victims in the beginning? You find out that not only are they not dead, but they're vampires. But not the evil, soul-sucking vampires. They're just pissed-off Romanian villagers who are just a tad annoyed that their neighbors tried to kill them!
There's something very, very Eastern European about this film. Everything that happens, undead and otherwise, is met by almost every character as just one more shitty thing they've had to deal with over the course of their lives, and the little moments of joy, when you realize just how crazy things are and can laugh at them, are the only things really worth living for.
Like gallows humour? Look no further than Strigoi.
directed by Faye Jackson
TL;DR: A wonderful dark comedy involving Eastern European politics, small town isolation, and vampires. A must-see for lovers of indie-horror looking for something truly different.
I'm not even sure how to describe this movie.... Faye Jackson has essentially turned at least three genres on their heads making this. At first, this seems like a murder mystery rooted in a backwards small Romanian town where everyone knows everyone, but the decades of political and social upheaval in the 20th century have contributed at least as many bad memories as good. Then it seems like religious-horror tale about a Christian sect gone horribly wrong. And then it sounds like the entire premise is really a backdrop against the real plot, about a devious scam that the murders were went to cover up. But then, those murder victims in the beginning? You find out that not only are they not dead, but they're vampires. But not the evil, soul-sucking vampires. They're just pissed-off Romanian villagers who are just a tad annoyed that their neighbors tried to kill them!
There's something very, very Eastern European about this film. Everything that happens, undead and otherwise, is met by almost every character as just one more shitty thing they've had to deal with over the course of their lives, and the little moments of joy, when you realize just how crazy things are and can laugh at them, are the only things really worth living for.
Like gallows humour? Look no further than Strigoi.