Director: Denise Castro
Year: 2018
Country: Spain
Alternate Titles: Drácula de Denise Castro
Genre: Vampire
Plot:
Desperate to realize her vision, a maverick filmmaker brings her cast and crew to the fabled castle in Romania to film a new version of the novel, but the longer they shoot there, the more her eccentric personality hides the truth about what’s happening to her cast and crew.
Review:
For the most part, this was a fairly solid and enjoyable outing. The rather fun storyline here, involving the director attempting to make her own variation on the story and managing to drag her team to the castle where he lived to get them in the right mindset, as well as get the proper setting for the story, and slowly find the chaos of everything too much to bear when it dawns on everything that the castle they’re visiting is not related to the legend of the character their film is based on, sets this going rather nicely. The initial half of this one, involving the characters trying to rehearse, going through their different relationship issues, or struggling with the confines of the bizarre script they’re being forced to make, creates a rather solid tone that’s cheesy and lighthearted, especially with the constant meta comments at play involving the films inspired by the legend rather than the book itself continually cropping up.
This serves to set the second part of the film up as a series of intriguing reveals, focusing on the unnatural behavior of the possessed girl following them around the castle, as some form of curse coming to claim them. The scenes are handled well enough, involving the blank-eyed, trance-like figure walking around performing supernatural actions against them or serving to give context to the flash visions of something supernatural affecting their cameras while trying to record. It all gives this enough of a setup for the final half, where it goes about trying to invoke the real truth behind the experience, although that highlights the one issue here, where it’s focus on the filmmaking aspects of what’s going on makes the horror elements pretty lacking. With the director’s behavior on everything being immensely impersonal and problematic in trying to make the film work while everything else takes place at the expense of the horror, it comes off as the main issue with this one.
Overview: **.5/5
A decent and intriguing take on the genre, this is a likable feature with enough going for it to be somewhat enjoyable even though some of the drawbacks here are damaging enough to keep it from being anything more than that. Those with an appreciation for this kind of genre fare or who are curious about it will have the most to like here, while most others might want to heed caution.
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