Rating: 3.5/5
Cult Movie Challenge 2024 | 39/52 | Vampire
Night. Nights without sleep. Long nights in which the brain lights up like a big city.
Cue “Soon” by My Bloody Valentine.
Nadja is that classic young Manhattanite — living off Dad’s old money and not doing anything specifically for work. She meets a cute boy at the bar, tells him her story, and takes him home. While they’re having sex, she bites his neck and drinks his blood.
Mid-feast, Nadja receives a vision of her father being murdered — a stake through the heart. Nadja takes her slave, Renfield, to the morgue to pick up the body of her father, Count Dracula. Nadja hopes that, no longer in her father’s shadow, she will have more freedom to live a new life.
Lucy runs to the boxing ring to tell her husband, Jim, that his uncle is in jail for murder. Jim bails out his uncle, Van Helsing, and takes him out for a bite. His uncle tells Jim that they need to cut off Dracula’s head, or he will return. Meanwhile, Lucy meets Nadja at a bar, and the two hit it off.
Cue “Roads” by Portishead.
Historically, stories surrounding Dracula’s daughter have dealt with identity. She is often coded as a closeted lesbian. This film also explores identity, and how love can drive us to change ourselves, hopefully for the better. But what about us can we change, and what is inherent to our nature?
By far the star of the movie is the amazing soundtrack. The Verve’s “One Way to Go” plays a recurring role. Also, more Portishead, because Portishead fucking rules.
This film will likely alienate many traditional horror fans. The horror elements are more background fodder, and even the story takes a backseat to the aesthetics. Nadja’s world fractures and blurs when she feels love—an effect achieved with a Fisher-Price PixelVision camcorder.
I’d call this an underrated gem — not a mind-blowing experience, but an artful take on a familiar story.