Director: Santiago Fernández Calvete
Year: 2022
Country: Argentina
Alternate Titles: Sangre Vurdalak
Genre: Vampire
Plot:
After returning from a hunt, a man’s strange behavioral changes toward his family start to alert them that his sayings involving a family curse about a bloodthirsty creature known as a Wurdulak might have infected the family, and must try to figure out the truth before the family’s killed off by the creature.
Review:
This one turned out to be a rather mixed bag effort. When this one works is due to the intriguing nature of the setup involving the couple returning to the community and trying to readjust to life there since they left. The tense meetings with the girlfriend's family and the later scenes of the family trying to determine why the lack of compassion for his daughters’ interests and desires to be a part of the modern world give this a rather fun start to what’s going on. That the rest of the family has grown tired of the sheltered lifestyle and see the barbaric behavior as being signs of something going wrong as the telltale warnings he mentioned start to take place. It all comes together with the family curse that’s brought up involving the history of the predators coming for the family and needing human blood from their own family members to be a highly impressive setup.
That also manages to provide the film with a lot of fun moments once the father returns and everything starts getting spelled out. The confrontations at the house the night he leaves are the best of this, displaying their complete inability to recognize the situation and descend into paranoia and hysteria quite easily trying to lock the boyfriend up while jumping at the slightest noise around them, starts this rather nicely. The main conflicts at the house the next morning as well as the series of battles with the family that includes the highly obvious change in behavior while debating what he really is provide some strong banter between everyone in the household that sets the stage for the finale. The big battle between the vampire and the remaining family members is a bit scaled-down from what could’ve been but has some enjoyable and brutal sections which are quite fun. These factors make this one quite fun.
There are some minor incidents here that hold this one back. The biggest issue with this one is the central storyline idea being utilized here that is so familiar to genre fans that it makes the family out to be completely blinded by loyalty in the face of actual danger. The fact that it’s plainly obvious what’s gone on regarding what he could be causes them to be so moronic in not doing anything to protect themselves is a major factor with this one. Instead of just performing simple tasks that would immediately determine what he really is, their insistence on placating his demands that highlight his condition leads to their rightful downfall that could’ve been avoided with more common sense. As well, there’s a lot of trouble trying to get through the series of technical issues here with badly out-of-place songs on the soundtrack and a distracting tendency to switch between dubbed voices and subtitled sayings in the same conversation that cause a tonal whiplash and drag this one down.
Overview: ***.5/5
A solid enough if somewhat flawed genre outing, there's a lot to like here which manages to get some of the positives to overcome the negatives even though they do manage to get brought down a little by the flaws. Those who are intrigued by the setup or fans of the overall style attempted here will have a lot to like here while most others should heed caution with this one.
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