Taking their titles directly from Eastern European folklore, both 2009’s VAMPIR and 2021’s STRIGOI are, perhaps, the only two out of many thousands of vampire films that have tried as much as possible to ground their productions in the lands where these monsters “live.” As such, their settings are uniquely tied to the mythology of the vampire, and are crucial to understanding the people, politics, and palpable presence of supernatural beings in the small villages that gave rise to the legends.
STRIGOI, filmed in Romania, tells the story of Vlad Cozma (Cătălin Paraschiv), a med school dropout who had been living in Italy but returns to the village where he was born. Soon after his arrival, the elderly local mayor / crime boss, Constantin Tirescu, turns up dead — murdered by villagers who, upon the fall of communism, sought to reclaim their land, only to find Tirescu controls it all. Another seemingly accidental death in the village motivates Vlad to try investigate the goings-on, only to find that Constantin and his wife have both turned into strigoi (a Romanian word for an insatiably hungry, flesh-eating revenant). By the end of the film, the villagers, in an act of vigilante justice, cut out Constantin’s heart and burn it. Vlad eventually comes around to the realization that these supernatural creatures are real (and really disgusting). The end of the film is Vlad, carrying a shovel, standing at a crossroads (where suspected vampires were buried in order to possibly confuse them), next to a cock, ready to crow in the early hours of morning. He is seemingly ready to carry on — not as the doctor he thought he would be — but an unconventional and somewhat reluctant vampire hunter, resigned to his new role in a community that has vastly changed since he had been away.
Written and directed by Faye Jackson, a British filmmaker married to a Romanian producer, STRIGOI is a UK / Romanian co-production. Mostly in English, it is not a traditional vampire film by any means. Its main theme of greed in the wake of communism uses vampirism mostly as metaphor (albeit a graphic metaphor… especially when Constantin’s wife gobbles up everything in a woman’s kitchen, including the woman!). More so, beyond greed, there is the suggestion that the West turned a blind eye to the real-world horrors of Nicolae Ceausescu.
While real-world horrors drive the plot of STRIGOI, the Serbian-British-German production that is VAMPIR is a more traditional — but unconventional — vampire film. Vampir is, in fact, a Serbian word, from which (no surprise) we get the word “vampire.” As such, a Serbian village is the perfect place to set this tale of a Arnaut, a Londoner of Serbian heritage who witnesses a crime and must return to the homeland of his family in order to lay low. Shot in the municipality of Trstenik, Serbia, VAMPIR delivers on an authentic Eastern European community that is both welcoming and secretive. A place where a man can definitely hide. And lose himself.
Hired as a cemetery caretaker, Arnaut — played by Branko Tomović, who also wrote and directed the film —soon has terrible nightmares. He is guided by the elderly Baba Draga to try to understand his dreams and the odd behavior of the townspeople. A priest tries to help, but it is inevitable. In the last reel, Arnaut becomes a blood-sucking vampire.
Even more so than Jackson’s STRIGOI, Tomović’s VAMPIR is an allegory for the modern West clashing with the mysterious East. In this regard, it is much like Bram Stoker’s DRACULA. Like Jonathan Harker before him, Arnaut is even left at the crossroads by his cabbie, a man who will not go into the village because of its reputation. At least that’s what Western viewers would assume. Mostly in English, STRIGOI uses the Serbian language — never translated on screen — sparingly but effectively. Thus, we don’t know what the cabbie says, and are further distanced by the film, which makes it clear that Arnaut isn’t in London anymore.
Unlike Harker’s expedition in DRACULA, however, Arnaut’s journey is one of self-revelation that he is becoming not only a man of Serbian blood, but one who drinks it as well.
The message in both films? You can go home again, but shouldn’t! One cannot escape where they come from, even if the reason is one of DNA. And in their dissimilar but similar tales, both STRIGOI and VAMPIR effectively take the trope of “the return of the hero” and invert it. Instead of receiving the rewards of a quest, these heroes have fled from the West with their only reward being one of renewed purpose in STRIGOI, and horrible transformation in VAMPIR. In this regard, they are very different films. The same goes for tone. Jackson infuses STRIGOI with plenty of humor, while VAMPIR is as serious as a heart attack.
A whole lot of arthouse meets a little bit of grindhouse in these films (with a healthy dose of folk horror). Slow, Deliberate in their pacing, they are slow-burns that deliver with wildly different finales. Both stand as fine examples of offbeat vampire films that should be sought out by fans that want immersion in the real “old” world — where folklore truly informs the experience. Viewers are left with a sense that these monsters are real, because the people are so real. Villagers both inviting and secretive, raised on the legends of things that suck blood in the night. Steeped in Eastern European folklore, they deserve their place among the best vampire films of the 21st-century.
