Sometimes a wooden pointer, presumably attached to director Benjamin Christensen’s hand, protrudes into the frame to draw your eye to a particular detail of the drawing in question.Īlas, the Ken Burns zoom was still not technically possible.
Some of the reenactments of medieval times and historical accusations of witchcraft are lavish in their scope and texture… other segments, including much of the beginning, feel like a 1920s version of a Ken Burns doc, with the camera trained on drawings and lithographs to represent a history of witchcraft and how these supernatural occurrences can be explained through modern medicine and psychology.
This four-part essay film was the most expensive Scandinavian silent film ever made, and it shows.
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If movie theaters ever truly go extinct, it’s that kind of moment - each member of the audience spotting it at their own speed with an uncontrollable gasp - that will haunt us for letting them die.
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Toni Collette gives a career-best performance as the fraying Annie Graham, a Utah artist whose mother’s death ignites a chain reaction of tragedies that unfold with almost genetic predetermination her preteen daughter’s decapitation, a transgressive jolt in a film that’s full of unforgettable scares, is just the first sign of an unstoppable curse.Īster’s debut feature so beautifully melts family strife into Satanic horror that it enflamed a lot of needless chatter about the semantics of its genre, but the only “elevated horror” worth talking about is Collette hiding in the shadows along the top of the frame like a demonic spider. CBĪ masterfully crafted meditation on inherited trauma, inescapable legacies (the kind that tend to fester in the attic darkness like heirlooms you’re too afraid to look for let alone throw away), and the guilt that so many parents feel about bringing a child into this sick, sad world, Ari Aster’s “Hereditary” douses an intergenerational drama in unleaded nightmare fuel until a single spark is enough to make an entire family self-immolate. So much so, you think he’ll command you next. Most of Browning’s chills come from simple shot-reverse-shot edits, all powered by Lugosi’s unwavering gaze. His protracted delivery set the stage for countless horror films to come (and even more parodies): “I do not drink… wine.” “We will leave tomorrow… even-ing.” But in context it also suits a character for whom English is far from a first language, and lends itself to a story about twee English folk fearing this exotic foreigner with his strange appetites. His eyes sharply lit by a spotlight from cinematographer Karl Freund, Lugosi looks striking, even handsome. He was only 6’1″ but he somehow seems much taller. One that’s pretty accurate, too: When Bram Stoker published “Dracula” in 1897, Transylvania was part of the Kingdom of Hungary - hence, all the peasants you see say their prayers in Hungarian, and of course Lugosi himself, 48 when he donned the cape and fangs onscreen, was Hungarian.
The opening 15 minutes is all that’s set in this courtly vampire’s home country, but director Tod Browning delivers a masterpiece of mood. The chilling effect of Bela Lugosi’s performance as the undead Transylvanian count lies in his uncanny ability to stare into the camera… and into you. The first thing you notice is his stillness.
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